Reinhard Goebel, founder and director of Musica Antiqua Köln (1973-2005) and holder of a chair in performance practice at the Mozarteum Salzburg (2010-2025), continues his tireless work creating and developing "new" 18th-century repertoire. In May 2025, he returned to the masterful arrangement that Munich composer Franz Gleißner made of Mozart's "Gran Partita" K. 361 around 1800. Current performances and a modern recording were both desired and anticipated. In May 2025, Goebel performed the works heard on this CD together with the Munich Radio Orchestra during the Residenz- und Schlössertournee in Amberg, Ansbach, Dachau, and Oettingen, and recorded them beforehand in Studio 1 of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation.
The "Gran Partita" KV 361, one of his finest works, was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for the former Mannheim orchestra, which had relocated to Munich following the elector's forced dynastic move. The work, unusually scored for twelve wind instruments and double bass, is rarely heard. When it was to be printed in 1800, it was published in an arrangement for a traditional orchestra, which Munich composer Franz Gleißner had masterfully completed on commission for the music publisher. Reinhard Goebel has repeatedly praised this powerful arrangement, published under the title "Sinfonia concertante"—and now he does so again on the stage of the Munich Radio Orchestra. He writes: "How dull and empty the world would be without arrangements. There are no reasons AGAINST arrangements—the reasons FOR arrangements, on the other hand, can be manifold and complex."
The composer and conductor Christian Cannabich led the renowned Mannheim orchestra with almost military discipline. The young Mozart was fascinated by both the concertmaster and the orchestra. "One might imagine," Goebel writes, "that Mozart perhaps performed the 'Sinfonia concertante' with or against Cannabich." This concertante piece for two violins and orchestra "is, both in terms of violin technique and composition, an endpoint that the veterans of the Mannheim school could not surpass, but above all could not further develop."
