Description

In this first edition, the Basilisk Edition presents a long-lost gamba concerto by Joseph Fiala, a contemporary and friend of WA Mozart, which Thomas Fritzsch found after a long search in a Swiss Benedictine monastery and carefully reconstructed.

The Bohemian Joseph Fiala (1748-1816), well-travelled oboist, violoncellist, viol player and composer, was a remarkable artist in many respects, whose lifespan spanned the period between JS Bach and F. Mendelssohn Bartholdy. In 1778, thanks to Leopold Mozart, Fiala became principal oboist in the Prince Archbishop's Chapel in Salzburg, whose members also included Leopold and Wolfgang Amadé Mozart and Michael Haydn. Leopold Mozart offered Fiala's family an apartment at Getreidegasse 9, the birthplace of his children Maria Anna and Wolfgang Amadé, and the close friendship between the two families developed. When Fiala performed the gamba in front of the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II in 1790, he was called "the best living gamba player". Through Carl Friedrich Abel and Joseph Fiala, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart had a close personal relationship with two of the most famous viol players of his era. That is why the loss of Mozart's gamba compositions weighs heavily! The German viol player Thomas Fritzsch did not want to come to terms with the unknown whereabouts of an orchestral viol concerto by Joseph Fiala, the existence of which is documented in an artist dictionary from 1815. He finally found what he was looking for in the music library of the Benedictine monastery in Engelberg (Switzerland).