Pages Torn from Hoffmeister February 3, 2013

In 18th-century Vienna, composer and musical entrepreneur Franz Anton Hoffmeister issued periodical chamber music collections for subscribers. When the magazine arrived, you would tear out the parts necessary for your next quartet party. For their concert party, the New Esterhazy Quartet selected two of the best works ever to appear in these publications: Haydn's quartet Op. 42 in D minor and Mozart's quartet in D, K. 499. The program also features Hoffmeister's own quartet in F minor, from the same issue as the Haydn quartet.

The members of the period ensemble-violinists Lisa Weiss and Kati Kyme, violist Anthony Martin, and cellist William Skeen-often occupy the front seats of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and American Bach Soloists.

Hoffmeister announced his intention in 1785 "to lay before lovers of music a plan, according to which they can purchase an entire library of original music over the course of several years...to this end I have already made agreements with our best local composers, Haydn, Mozart, Wanhall, Albrechtsberger, Pleyel, Mitscha, as well as foreign masters, together with my own works, to receive new products from month to month." He offered three subscription services, catering to players of keyboard instruments, the flute, and of string chamber music. Hoffmeister was the first publisher of over a dozen of Mozart's works. Furthermore, he was the guarantor for one of the many loans Mozart took out in his last years to tide him over from one commission to the next. And in the official inventory made of Mozart's printed books and music on his death, item 67 (of 73 total) gets by far the highest valuation-a folder of 22 pieces of "Musickpranumeration Hofmeisterishe". Violist Anthony Martin says about Mozart's Quartet in D, K. 499: "This is substantial in ambition and scope-no mere magazine article. It sits in solitary splendor between his six 'Haydn' Quartets (heard in our 4th & 5th seasons) and his last three 'Prussian' Quartets."

Official Website: http://www.newesterhazy.org