Myslivecek: Symphonies & Overtures.(Sound Recording Review)

Myslivecek: Symphonies & Overtures. Michi Gaigg, L'Orfeo Barockorchester. CPI 777 050-2.

What do you mean you've never heard of Josef Myslivecek? He was a contemporary (1737-1781) of Wolfgang Mozart, a composer who came from Prague to Italy to Vienna to make his fortune, who wrote more symphonies and operas that practically anyone at the time, who engaged in business dealings with Mozart's father, who was said to have had an influence on the younger Mozart, and who, like W. Mozart, died at a relatively young age, forty-three.

If you've never heard of him, well, neither have many people today. One listen to the first of seven symphonies on this two-disc set and you say to yourself, "Sounds a lot like Mozart or Haydn." Then by the time you get to his third or fourth symphonies, you're saying "Sounds a lot like Myslivecek's first few symphonies." The problem with the symphonies, which occupy the first disc, is that they have little invention and all sound alike. The second disc tends to rectify this situation considerably, however, as the five overtures contained there ...