Symphonies Op. 35 Nos. 1-3 [CD]

Paul Wranitzky was born on 30 December 1756 in Neureisch in Moravia. He was almost exactly eleven months younger than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was, who he survived by seventeen years. The obvious comparison between the two contemporaries does, of course, yield some astonishing results. Among other things, this may be because the older of the two was a child prodigy, whereas Wranitzky only became a composer after a circuitous route and had to learn much of what came so naturally to the Mozart. He applied this approach with great ingenuity, however, as his four dozen symphonies alone reveal. Although he had some of them published in volumes in the traditional manner, their style suggests they serve more as a missing link between his teacher, Joseph Haydn, and the 'man of the future' - Ludwig van Beethoven. The three pieces published as Opus 35 in April 1800, though composed in the previous decade, are no exception. Original, full of formal surprises and musically progressive, they evoke a faint suspicion. Josef Martin Kraus, the Swedish court conductor who was in Vienna around 1783, may have imparted to Wranitzky some of his audacity.