Akin to Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, Brandl’s Symphonie Concertante, as a work with two solo instruments, expands the dimensions of the first movement solo concerto. In this way, Brandl gives both soloists space and time to present and then virtuosically elaborate upon all the themes and motifs in succession, which our two soloists, the Castro-Balbi brothers, display sensationally. Brandl had composed his four-movement Symphony in D major with a dazzling finale as a 'Grande Simphonie à grand Orchestre' some ten years earlier. Already then, Brandl anticipated Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony op. 60, completed in 1806. The quest for new sound worlds that the Rhinelander Beethoven envisioned is also evident in Brandl, who was ten years his senior. Today musicologists are discovering Brandl as, an artist whose mature musical language surmounted the style of Classicism and instead favoured a sharpened chromaticism, exhibiting Early Romantic characteristics.
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