Horn Concerto No.4 in E flat, K.495

One of Mozart’s best friends in Vienna was Joseph Ignaz Leutgeb, hornist and cheese-monger. It is not known whether the composer bought cheese from him but it is known that he valued him highly as a musician. Although he teased him mercilessly - “Wolfgang Amadé Mozart has taken pity on Leutgeb, ass, ox, and fool,” he wrote on the manuscript of the earliest of the six concertos he wrote for him - it is clear from the scoring of these works that he was no ordinary hornist. He was exceptionally accomplished, it seems, in using a hand-stopping technique to produce notes that, before the valve horn was invented, were just gaps in the scale as far as other hornists were concerned.

Certainly, Mozart appreciated that particularly quality in Leutgeb’s playing, as the Horn Concerto No.4 (which, dating from 1786, was actually the second to be written) eloquently confirms. The most interesting testimony to Leutgeb’s skill in the first movement is the expressive line the hornist draws through chromatic intervals theoretically unavailable at the time. Similarly personal confessions are offered in the episodes between the three appearances of the lyrical main theme of the Romanza. In the last movement, however, the horn reverts to its outdoor type in a rondo that so cleverly exploits the hunting associations of the instrument that it has become one of the most popular pieces ever written for it.

One of Mozart’s best friends in Vienna was Joseph Ignaz Leutgeb, hornist and cheese-monger. It is not known whether the composer bought cheese from him but it is known that, while only three of the six horn concertos he wrote for him have survived in their complete form, he valued him highly as a musician. Although he teased him mercilessly - “Wolfgang Amadé Mozart has taken pity on Leutgeb, ass, ox, and fool,” he wrote on the manuscript of the earliest of these concertos in 1783 - it is clear from the scoring of these works that he was no ordinary hornist. He was exceptionally accomplished, it seems, in using a hand-stopping technique to produce notes that, before the valve horn was invented, were just gaps in the scale as far as other hornists were concerned. That is presumably why, according to a report in the Mercure de France in 1770, he could “sing an Adagio as perfectly as the most mellow, interesting and accurate voice.”

Certainly, Mozart appreciated that particularly quality in Leutgeb’s playing, as the Horn Concerto No.4 (which, dating from 1786, was actually the second to be written) eloquently confirms. The most interesting testimony to Leutgeb’s skill in the first movement is not so much the melodic material introduced on the soloist’s first entry attractive though it is, as a later passage following a recall of the orchestral introduction: the strings turn the harmonies to the minor and the hornist draws an expressive line through chromatic intervals theoretically unavailable at the time. Similarly personal confessions are offered in the episodes between the three appearances of the lyrical main theme of the Romanza. In the last movement, however, the horn reverts to its outdoor type in a rondo that so cleverly exploits the hunting associations of the instrument that it has become one of the most popular pieces ever written for it.