Franz Xaver Dussek was the most prominent composer of instrumental music in Prague during his lifetime. A near contemporary of Haydn and a friend of Mozart, he composed a large number of symphonies, mainly during the 1760s and 1770s, a period of enormous economic and artistic vitality in the Habsburg dominions. The three sparkling, finely wrought symphonies featured here, not without programmatic features such as the inclusion of wind instruments in the slow movements, compare very favourably with those of his compatriot Vaňhal, and Viennese contemporaries such as Dittersdorf and Hofmann.