Manuscript No. 8040 in the archive of the Conservatoire Library in Prague is a clean and boldly scribed score of a Concerto per il Piano Forte in E flat major, dated June 1803. The confidence in its pen strokes chimes well with the characterful music its scribe committed to paper. There is an expansiveness of calligraphic gesture from time to time (for instance, as triplet-quaver arpeggios stride forth in the first violins just a few bars into the opening Allegro) that represents visually music of fine craftsmanship and weighty symphonic purpose, filled with distinctive ideas that ebb and flow in fine proportion: nothing outstaying its welcome, nor intruding mercurially, never to appear again. Those ideas are imaginatively developed too, broadly outlining tried and tested tonal strategies, and are sometimes surprisingly backlit with exotic chromatic colouring (diligently considered and expertly executed in orchestration). That confidence of craftsmanship extends also to the quality of the piano writing: this is a concerto whose virtuosic and declamatory language is fitted specifically to the civic concert hall rather than the genteel private chamber – a three-movement concerto on a grand scale.
You can actually find this manuscript easily for yourself: it is available on open access on IMSLP, along with other works by the same composer. But it is only recently that the work (which lacks a title-page and has no ascription) has been securely allocated to Johann Joseph Rösler (1771–1812). The secure connection to Rösler was established by Alena Hönigová, whose edition of the concerto is under review here; there is also now a recording of the work with Hönigová as soloist, and with the Orchester Eisenberg, directed by Jiří Sycha (Koramant Records KR1003, 2018). Rösler left a handwritten thematic catalogue of his compositions dating from 1796–1809 (‘Repertorio di tutte le mie Composizioni incominciando dall’ Anno 1796 Parte 1mo’), now owned by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna (shelfmark 1248/34). It includes the incipit of the characterful E flat Concerto found in manuscript 8040, a work long thought to be lost (Rösler's Piano Concerto No. 1 in D major has been known since its discovery by Guido Adler in 1888).
Rösler's musical output was extensive, but not all of it is known to survive. According to the Repertorio it included nine operas (in Italian and German), melodramas, musical accompaniments to pantomimes, some thirty musical interludes for works by other composers and some eighty vocal compositions (among them masses, motets, cantatas and a host of arias for solo, duet, trio and quartet). In the latter category is a Cantate auf Mozarts Tod (1798), which is perhaps his best-known composition. Some of the operatic and theatrical works were performed extensively in Prague and in Vienna, where he spent the last decade of his life working at the Court Theatre and for the Countess Lobkowitz. His instrumental output was also apparently broad, comprising over four dozen works for solo keyboard (Rösler was a virtuoso pianist), as well as orchestral music and chamber music.
Rösler was largely self-taught as a composer, having received basic musical instruction from his father. In the time-honoured way, he evidently learned his craft by writing out works by esteemed masters such as Carl Phillipp Emmanuel Bach and his – at that time – less celebrated father, Johann Sebastian, and through his fingers, absorbing musical patterns at the keyboard. Stylistically, his music lies between Mozart and Beethoven (whose idiom the E flat Concerto resembles); indeed, the manuscript of the piano part from the D major work that Adler discovered in 1888 names Beethoven, which led Breitkopf to include the work in their complete Beethoven edition before Hans Engel unearthed the true composer in 1925. Rösler's Cantate auf Mozarts Tod, unsurprisingly, leans more in the direction of Mozart, and it is possible that he became acquainted with Mozart's style through some occasional lessons with František Xaver Dušek.
The E flat major Piano Concerto is scored for strings, a single flute, pairs of oboes, bassoons, horns, trumpets and timpani. Its expansive first movement (an Allegro preceded by a two-bar Adagio maestoso tutti) covers fifty pages of full score in Hönigová's edition. In addition to full-textured orchestral and solo piano writing (this is not a work for an amateur pianist), there are moments of finely weighted delicacy, especially for the solo piano and upper woodwinds, either in dialogue or with lightly scored offbeat chordal punctuations setting the piano's right-hand sextuplets in relief (bars 235–243). Rösler's frequently gymnastic passagework in the solo part resembles that which may be expected in a late Mozart concerto, or in Beethoven's first two; perhaps it is not quite as inventive or unpredictable as theirs on all occasions, but it more than holds the attention of the listener, and is rewarding for the player too (the first movement has a fully notated cadenza). Charmingly decorous embellishment of a folk-like melody characterizes the Andantino, a movement which is once again illuminated by occasional dashes of woodwind colour that highlight structural turning-points with great skill. If this oasis of repose may be thought to approach the Mozartean, then the Allegretto finale returns once more to the world of Beethoven, incorporating several teasing chromatic twists – whether ‘incidental’ within arpeggiated patterns on a local scale, or of more serious structural import on the tonal scale – along with some judicious use of sforzandi to highlight off-beat gestures. All in all, Rösler's musical language confidently navigates the challenge of balancing wit and panache against the coherence of formal design. The concluding section (Allegro vivace) prefigures in its piano writing the final pages of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, Op. 37, running full pelt into its culminating fortissimo cadence.
The presentation of the score is uniformly excellent (playing through the solo part, I cannot remember encountering a single error); the text is clean and uncluttered and clear to read, and while page-turns are generally always hazardous for editors of virtuoso piano works, these have been sensibly considered, minimizing the impossible. An Introduction in Czech, German and English sets the scene nicely for this important addition to the literature, and a concise and informative Critical Commentary is provided at the end. Bärenreiter has set the standard for urtext editions of repertory from Rösler's era, and we must be thankful to them and to Alena Hönigová for making such an enjoyable and well-crafted work available once more. Tantalizingly, Rösler's Repertorio lists a third piano concerto; let us hope that, one day, it too may be found and published.
