2 Cadenzas for Anton Heberle's Concerto in G Major for soprano/descant recorder

Anton Heberle’s Concerto in G Major (originally in Eb major), dating from the early 1800s, is formally titled ‘Concert pour le Cskán ou Flûte douce avec Violon, Viola, Violoncelle et deux Corns at libit. Composée e dédiée a Monseig. Ig. Noble de Végh par Antoine Heberle. Vienne’.

The czakan was an unusual early nineteenth century instrument made out of a walking stick, with finger holes and keys, producing an instrument with greatest similarity to the recorder. Anton Heberle is remembered through his pieces for this now obsolete instrument, substituted for by the soprano (descant) recorder. The Concerto in G is in a Classical idiom: the first movement is in a fairly straightforward sonata form; the second movement a Romance consisting of a theme and two variations; and the finale is a minuet with two trios and a coda.

At two places in the work, towards the end of the second and third movements, there are very obvious pauses for cadenzas. In writing cadenzas for these moments I have tried to combine the idiom of the piece with my own style; to form a link between the early nineteenth and late twentieth/early 21st century. This includes occasional use of modern techniques like microtones and overblowing (to create multiphonics). While this is most obviously related to postmodernism, extended techniques were not unheard of in nineteenth century concertos (eg the vocalising/multiphonics in Weber’s Horn Concerto), nor was the idea of a cadenza using a different style to the surrounding work (the most striking example being Alkan’s cadenzas for Mozart and Beethoven piano concertos—finding a reflective echo in Schnittke’s cadenza for Beethoven’s violin concerto).

The quasi-polyphonic passage in the Allegro and Prestissimo sections of Cadenza II — while ultimately derived from the recorder’s accompanimental passagework in the first movement — provided a fruitful germ for material in my own Recorder Concerto of 1993.

Premiered by David Maycock, Durham Light Infantry Museum & Durham Art Gallery, Durham, 20 November 1991 (as part of a performance of Heberle’s Concerto in G Major with Brian Inglis, piano).