Salieri, Antonio

Antonio Salieri – Concerto per l’organo
(Concerto for Organ and Orchestra in C Major, 1773)

(18 August 1750, Legnago, Venetian Republic – 7 May 1825, Vienna)

Allegro ma non molto[Solo improvisation or an interpolated slow movement] Allegro assai

Preface
This sixteen-minute work is scored for two oboes, two trumpets, timpani, and strings (two violins, viola, and cello/bass). Salieri’s manuscript only includes two completed movements. It is likely that a central, improvised movement was interpolated by the blind Vienna-born pianist and composer Maria Theresia von Paradis (1759-1824), to whom Salieri dedicated the work in 1773, while he was still living with the composer Florian Leopold Gassmann.

As a result of introductions made by Gassmann, Salieri was welcomed into Emperor Joseph II’s circle and participated in Sunday morning salons at the Viennese home of the Martinez family, where he met court poet Metastasio (Pietro Antonio Domencio Trapassi) and composer Christoph Wilibald von Gluck. His early successes from this period include both serious and comic operas and all five of his concertos. Salieri had first studied organ with the Giuseppe Simoni in Legnago (1761-1765), and then with Venetian opera composer Giovanni Battista Pescetti (1765-1766). Pescetti was the second organist in San Marco, so Salieri was allowed to play on all of the instruments in that great edifice. …

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