Various - Fran?ois-Adrien Boieldieu: Piano Concertos, Six Overtures

Fran�ois-Adrien Boieldieu numbers among the most important exponents of the op�ra comique of the French imperial era and the subsequent restoration. With La dame blanche (1825) he even produced one of the internationally most successful works of this genre; it served as a model example for other composers and played a significant role in the further development of the op�ra comique. From 1803 to 1811 he was the court music director in St. Petersburg, and in 1817 he became a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory. In the overtures of his op�ras comiques Boieldieu usually anticipates thematic material from the particular opera. As a result, the overture not only prepares the listener for the atmosphere and tone color of the particular op�ra comique but also provides for a recognition effect when the themes familiar from the overture reappear in a later phase of the stage action. The great wealth of melodic invention and the pronounced melodic cantability particularly characteristic of Boieldieu�s music and the Piano Concerto heard here (premiere: 1792 in Rouen) inspired his contemporaries to call him the French Mozart.