At the age of 16, the Italian composer Antonio Salieri was "discovered" in Venice by Florian L. Gassman, then court composer at the court of Vienna. Pleasantly impressed by his talent, he promptly took him to the Austrian capital to give him composition lessons and, incidentally, introduce him to the court of Joseph II.
Two years later, in 1768, Salieri composed his first opera, La Vestale, perhaps not a great success and now lost. The deserved recognition would come later with his opera Armida, of 1771, a great success, which survives to this day, and which had the virtue of making him, from then on, one of the most important opera composers of the time.
Instrumental music
But Salieri did not only write music for the stage. The composer has an important but modest catalog of purely instrumental music, somewhat forgotten today (with the exception, perhaps, of his Piano Concerto in C major), although much of it remained unpublished for many years. This is the case of the Concerto for flute, oboe, and orchestra in C major, written in 1774 and published only in the 60s of the last century, to the disgrace and regret of every oboist or flutist who has passed through this world since the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
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| Antonio Salieri (1750 - 1825) |
The work was composed at the age of 24, after the composer took up the post of Kapellmeister at the Italian Opera in Vienna, following the death of his mentor Gassman. Thus, the young Salieri held at an early age a position for which Mozart, six years younger, would perhaps have given his life, around the same time.
In Salieri's defense
Let us note here that Constanza Mozart, wife of the genius par excellence, took Salieri as a teacher for her son Franz Xavier, after the death of the genius. Furthermore, that year, in 1791, Mozart and Salieri attended together at least once to see The Magic Flute performed.
Concerto for flute, oboe, and orchestra in C major
Accompanied by the Chernihiv Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by the Ukrainian maestro Nikolai Sukach, Alexander Popov (flute), and Artyom Alekseenko (oboe), perform the work.
Movements:
The usual ones of the baroque concerto:
00 Allegro
08:38 Largo
16:16 Allegretto
