Franz Danzi was born in 1763 and as a teenager played as a cellist in the famous Palatinate court orchestra at Mannheim. Later he succeeded his father as cellist in Munich, where the Elector's court had moved in the late 1770s. Danzi was quite a prolific composer, not only of chamber and orchestral music but also of vocal music, too he even wrote a Turandot, not an opera but a singspiel, performed at Karlsruhe in 1817. He died in 1826.
The four concertos contained on this commendably well-filled CD represent the sum total of his works in this form for solo flute with orchestra. The idiom of the earliest of the concertos, Op. 30 in G major, is that of the late eighteenth century rather than of incipient romanticism, though there are strong hints of Beethoven and, above all, Weber in the orchestration, often containing unexpected modulations. Musically much of the writing is slight, with long passages of scale and arpeggio figures in the flute part, accompanied as often as not by the rudimentary rhythmic figures of the dance-salon of those times. A marked advance on this is encountered in the Concerto in D minor, Op. 31, even though it dates from about the same time (c. 1806). Here, again the solo part is characteristically late classical but the orchestration strikes a more advanced and, indeed, an often more interesting note. The main theme of the opening Allegro brings to mind in a mild way that of Mozart's D minor Piano Concerto, K466. The slow movement is particularly attractive with a lyrical flute solo punctuated by pairs of horns for which Danzi almost invariably writes interestingly. The finale is a lively Polacca with virtuoso passages for the flute.
The remaining two concertos, in D minor, Op. 42 and D major, Op. 43, both date from 1814 and contain much attractive if somewhat uneventful music in a more mature style. Andras Adorjan is a fine flautist who seems to have no trouble in finding his way around the most demanding passages in Danzi's writing. Just occasionally he is inclined to hurry but he has a firm rhythmic sense by and large and gives a persuasive account of these seldom heard concertos. Hans Stadlmair, still directing his Munich Chamber Orchestra, draws plenty of lively playing from it; I have long been grateful to him for performances of unusual repertoire. The recording is clear and sensibly balanced, allowing us to hear the many instances of Danzi's effective orchestration, a skill no doubt partly acquired through his association with the Mannheim ensemble.'