Outside Denmark, Kuhlau is remembered for his music for the flute, whose repertoire he greatly enriched though he also contributed prolifically to the literature of the piano. Denmark was his country of adoption (he left his native Germany in 1810 when he was 24 to avoid induction into Napoleon's armies, which had just taken Hamburg). The recording of his opera Lulu (Kontrapunkt, 5/89) reminds us of his important contribution to Danish musical life and in particular singspiel, or as I suppose we should call it, ''syngespiel''.
This CD opens with Kuhlau's best-known piece, the Overture to The elf's hill (''Elverhoj''), a fresh and engaging work which owes much to Mendelssohn. This will come as no surprise to those who recall the ''Spinning Song of the Witches'' in Act 2 of Lulu, also written in the 1820s. The five-movement Concertino for two horns is an earlier piece, written in 1821; a ''serious divertimento'', as Antony Hodgson puts it in his excellent notes. Like so much of Kuhlau, however, little of his music remains in the memory afterwards and the same must be said of the C major Concerto (1810) composed before he left Hamburg. The piece is much indebted to (and one might say modelled on) the Beethoven C major Concerto.
In the Concertino both Ib Lanzky-Otto and Froydis Ree Wekre are first rate, while Michael Ponti is no less admirable in the Piano Concerto. Although one cannot pretend this is music of any great substance, there is a likeable freshness and grace about it even when it is at its most derivative. The Odense Symphony Orchestra plays with much spirit under Othmar Maga and the recording is eminently acceptable.'