Kapellmeister at the Court of Weimar from 1772 until his death in 1791, Ernst Wilhelm Wolf enjoyed a reputation among his contemporaries for originality and experimentation with form and tone colours. His music includes a large number of harpsichord concertos, keyboard sonatas and string quartets, and about 35 symphonies of which at least 26 survive. The four symphonies on this disc are distinctive for their rhythmic vitality, structural inventiveness and unusually virtuosic writing for the woodwind.