Rosetti: Five Wind Partitas

Antonio Rosetti (1750-1792), a native of Bohemia with the Italianized name, is well on his way to becoming a well-known and well-placed classic again, in other words to rightly take up the position he already had during his lifetime: "...apart from Rosetti, who will always please, the compositions of Mozart, Pleyel, Haydn, etc. are now also feasible," wrote the musician pope Schubart in 1790. Rosetti was extremely fruitful, he wrote about 400 works and considered all musical genres abundantly. As court kapellmeister of the Oettingen-Wallerstein orchestra, which had fantastic wind instruments, he wrote especially for this highly virtuosic chamber music. His partitas or serenades are regarded as so-called great harmony. A sumptuous instrumentation with 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 3 horns, 2 bassoons and double bass gives the works symphonic proportions. Rosetti masterfully succeeded in raising the quality of these evening serenades, which were mainly intended to entertain, to a high musical level through skilful thematic and motivic work and surprising harmonic turns. It goes without saying that the Consortium Classicum with its selection of five serenades meets this standard.