Leopold Kozeluch was born on 26 June 1747 in Velvary, Bohemia—twenty miles north-west of Prague. Christened Jan Antonín Koželuh, he subsequently adopted the name Leopold to avoid confusion with his cousin, who shared exactly the same name and was also a musician (he served as the organist and choirmaster at St Vitus’ Cathedral in Prague from 1784 until his death in 1814). After a preliminary musical training in Velvary, ‘Leopold’ moved to Prague in 1765, where he studied not only with his cousin but also with Franz Xaver Duschek. During the 1770s he composed several ballets and pantomimes, and their success led him to abandon his law studies in 1778 and move to Vienna. It was here that he modified his surname to the Germanic ‘Kozeluch’.

By 1781 he was sufficiently well-regarded to be invited by the Archbishop of Salzburg to replace Mozart as his court organist—and sufficiently well established in Vienna to turn down the invitation. 'If he lets such a man go', he reportedly said to his friends, 'what might he not do to me?' By 1784 his compositions were starting to be published, and the following year he founded his own music publishing house, which was later run by his brother. In September 1791 he achieved a notable success with the cantata that he wrote for the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia, and on the accession of Emperor Franz II in 1792 he became an official composer at the Imperial Court in Vienna. He died in Vienna on 7 May 1818.

Many of Kozeluch’s compositions have been lost, including five of his six operas, but his surviving works include twenty-two piano concertos (he was one of the leading advocates of the fortepiano in preference to the harpsichord), fifty-six piano sonatas (including seven for piano duet) and eleven symphonies. The G minor symphony—the only one of these eleven to be written in a minor key—was the last in a group of three that was published in 1787, and it serves as a fascinating reminder that Mozart and Haydn were not the only composers writing outstanding music in Vienna during this period.

The surging power of the opening allegro has a febrile intensity that recalls Haydn’s famous ‘Sturm und Drang’ symphonies, but also a lyricism that is fully Mozartian in its dramatic sweep. The slow second movement, in which the violins are muted throughout, possesses a warm nobility that is the epitome of classical elegance and grace, but—again as with Mozart—there is an anguished vulnerability lurking beneath the surface, particularly in the plaintive dissonances of the woodwind writing.

Kozeluch foregoes the usual Minuet and Trio—the only time he did so in any of his surviving symphonies—and the finale launches headlong into the agitated pathos that characterizes the opening movement. Phrases are deliberately short, breathless and asymmetrical, and the composer eschews variety and contrast in favour of an almost monothematic vigour, propelling the music forwards with relentless verve and dynamism.

from notes by Ian Page © 2023