Mysliveček - Complete Keyboard Music

The Guardian 80

Hammond/Swedish Chamber Orchestra/McGegan
(BIS)
Pianist Clare Hammond revives work by a forgotten Czech composer with buoyant grace

However bad things had got for Mozart when he died, at least he still had his nose. We know from a letter Mozart wrote to his father that Josef Mysliveček, the Czech composer two decades his senior who was a friend and something of a mentor, had his burned off in a botched surgical attempt to cure syphilis. Like Mozart, Mysliveček was brilliant, acclaimed where he worked – mostly in Italy – and incurably profligate. Yet the difference in their posthumous success could hardly be more pronounced, and Mysliveček’s music has long been overlooked. Pianist Clare Hammond had to make her own new editions of the two brief piano concertos for this recording, the first to include all of Mysliveček’s definitely attributed keyboard music together.