Milhaly Mosonyi does not feature much in the domestic catalogues, though he is widely regarded (including by Dezso Legany, the author of the album note) as the most important nineteenth-century Hungarian composer after Liszt and Erkel. He was actually born Michael Brand, and only took his Hungarian name in 1859 some years after settling in Pest and adopting a Hungarian manner. The symphony here recorded dates from 1844, when Mosonyi (or Brand) was still exploring a post-Beethoven style. It is not even all that 'post'. Not only do the movement structure and the orchestration reflect Beethoven: there is a comparable use of modulation, of figuration, of such devices as creating tension towards the return of a theme or section by means of energetic figures repeated in a climbing scale until the dramatic moment is reached. The manner is all there; the distance between the two composers shows not in the thematic material (which is not the main point) but in Mosonyi's considerably lesser ability to make this well-studied style functionally effective, especially in the section of a sonata movement that always sorts out the men from the boys, the development. His Adagio is pleasantly turned; his scherzo has a good shot at Beethovenian energy; the rondo finale decides that Mozart might be a safer influence than Beethoven. The symphony is, then, to some extent manufactured; but it is good-quality manufacture by a talented craftsman working in the middle years of the century in the honest belief that Beethoven's example was still valid.
With the Piano Concerto of similar date, the influences are more romantic. Dr Legany regards Beethoven as still standing behind Mosonyi's invention; but over the other shoulder are peering Weber (whose First Piano Concerto Mosonyi must have known when he wrote his finale) and still more Chopin. In the piano-led invention of the first two movements, and in the elaborate cantilena, there is unmistakably the sound of the concertos which Chopin had written only about 15 years previously. Mosonyi is quick at seeing the point of these composers; he is less adept at building upon their example with original music of his own. But both works are well-turned, and make easy listening. They are affectionately directed by Robert Stankovsky, and Klara Kormendi relishes the graceful flourishes of the piano lines as if they really were by Chopin or Weber.'