Born in Moravia in 1759, Franz Krommer was trained as a violinist and organist. Relatively late in his carrier, in 1975, he settled in Vienna as a violin teacher, but he quickly earned a reputation as a composer, which is evident by the large number of his works published at the time.

Franz Krommer (1759-1831) was a prolific and very good composer, whose music is now being resuscitated with great and deserved success. It was difficult to be a composer in Vienna at the same time as Beethoven and Schubert, and most of their contemporaries have not survived the pressure. But Krommer managed to retain his personality and originality, becoming the last official director of chamber music and court composer to the Habsburg court under the conservative Emperor Francis I. The first of the two symphonies was published in 1803. Among its many interesting features is a haunting litde trio in the form of a waltz. The second work is much later, with four horns and three trombones, and is in C minor, but ending in the major. In both works, Krommer's knowledge of, and predilection for, the wind instruments is notable. The two works were well worth recording, especially with such felicitous performances and bright, pleasing recorded sound.

Matthias Bamert’s Contemporaries of Mozart project is one of Chandos’ longest-running and most successful recording series. Mozart’s unquestionable genius has tended to eclipse the work of many otherwise excellent composers who were writing at the same time as he. Often successful in their day, many of these composers fell into neglect over subsequent decades and were in some cases almost forgotten. Matthias Bamert has shown just how rich this area of the repertoire is, and each of his CDs received superb critical acclaim.

‘Under the conductor Howard Griffiths the OSI performed elegantly and just as brilliantly. In any event, a more convincing case could hardly be made for the music of Krommer, who is largely forgotten as a symphonist.’ This is what klassik-heute wrote of cpo’s release of the first three Krommer symphonies, and Vol. 2 now follows with his Symphonies Nos. 4, 5, and 7. Generally considered, No. 4 was Franz Krommer’s most successful symphony. If one terms it his ‘Dramatic Symphony’ because of its energetic forward motion, then ‘Festive Symphony’ is the title that suggests itself for No. 5. In No. 7 Krommer, to a certain extent, returns to the dramatic character of No. 4 but generates it in a manner that might be termed archaizing or historicizing.

Franz Krommer was once a highly regarded composer, but he then ceased to be remembered and disappeared more completely than any other creative musician of his generation. It was not until 1997 that the Czech musicologist Karel Padrta compiled a thorough catalogue of his works including a biographical introduction. Krommer’s oeuvre focuses almost exclusively on instrumental music. In his first symphony he succeeds in forming a thoroughly individual synthesis of stylistic elements recalling Haydn and Mozart, while in his second such work he largely distances himself from these models and develops a symphonic style all of his own.