Pleyel: Symphonies Concertantes

Pleyel’s symphonies concertantes are characteristic expressions of his idiosyncratic style. They are expansive, leisurely-paced works, texturally transparent in their solo sections and rich in melodic invention. Always sensitive to instrumental colour, Pleyel uses his unusual forces to weave a scintillating web of sound in these remarkable works. The original and virtually unknown version of the Violin Concerto in D, composed in the early 1780s, is one of the earliest of Pleyel’s solo concertos but no less attractive and assured than its successors. This recording includes the original first and second movements together with a new finale composed by Pleyel several years later.