REINHARD GOEBEL

MOZART: GRAN PARTITA (ORCHESTRA VERSION)

CANNABICH: SINFONIA CONCERTANTE

Reinhard Goebel, the founder and director of Musica Antiqua Köln from 1973 to 2005 and a professor of performance practice at the Mozarteum Salzburg from 2010 to 2025, continues to work tirelessly on creating and developing “new” 18th-century repertoire. In May 2025, he once again turned his attention to the masterful arrangement of Mozart’s Gran Partita, K. 361, made around 1800 by Munich composer Franz Gleissner. New performances as well as a modern recording were both desired and expected. Goebel performed the works featured on this CD with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester in May 2025 during their tour of royal residences and castles in Amberg, Ansbach, Dachau, and Oettingen, having recorded them in advance in Studio 1 at Bayerischer Rundfunk.

Wolfgang Amadé Mozart composed the Gran Partita, K. 361, one of his most magnificent works, for the former Mannheim orchestra, which had relocated to Munich when the elector was forced to move there for dynastic reasons. This rarely heard work features an unusual instrumentation of twelve wind instruments and a double bass. When it was due for publication in 1800, the Munich composer Gleissner presented the music publisher with a masterful arrangement for a standard orchestra. Reinhard Goebel has repeatedly championed this outstanding arrangement, which was published under the title of “Sinfonia concertante” – and has now done so once again with the Münchner Rundfunkorchester. He writes: “How barren and empty a world without arrangements would be! Nothing speaks against arrangements, yet the reasons in favour of them can be manifold and complex.”

The famous Mannheim orchestra was trained and drilled with almost military discipline by the composer and conductor Christian Cannabich, and the young Mozart was fascinated by leader and orchestra alike. “It is pleasant to imagine,” writes Goebel, “that Mozart may have played the 'Sinfonia Concertante' together with or against Cannabich.” This concert piece for two violins and orchestra, “ in terms of both violin playing and composition, represents a culmination that could not be surpassed, let alone developed further by the veteran forces of the Mannheim school.”

• Reinhard Goebel, an expert in historically informed performance practice and creator of “new” 18th-century repertoire, conducts the Münchner Rundfunkorchester.

• Mozart’s rarely heard “Gran Partita” performed in a masterful arrangement for orchestra by the Munich composer Franz Gleißner, dating from around 1800

• The highly virtuosic Sinfonia Concertante, an impressive double concerto by Mannheim kapellmeister and composer Christian Cannabich, completes the CD.

• Recent studio recordings made in May 2025 at Studio 1 of Bayerischer Rundfunk.