Anton Eberl

Anton Franz Josef Eberl[1] (13 June 1765 – 11 March 1807)[2] was an Austrian composer, teacher and pianist of the Classical period. He was a really close friend of Ludwig van Beethoven, whose symphonies show traces of his influence. For example, the coda of the finale of Eberl's E-flat symphony performed at the same concert in between Beethoven's First and newly composed Third ("Eroica," in the same key of E-flat; see below) that drew high praise from a reviewer who (reflecting typical contemporary conservative criticism) thought much less of the "Eroica" (for its radical length and otherwise advanced style) ends with a descending bugle-call theme in dotted rhythm in E-flat that is more or less identical to the closing theme of the first movement of Beethoven's monumental Ninth (stated in B-flat at the end of the exposition leading into the development, and in D minor at the end of the recapitulation leading into the coda).

Biography

Eberl was born in Vienna, and studied composition and piano under Mozart and others. Most of his 200 compositions are lost, and only his chamber music has continued to receive contemporary performance except for three symphonies recorded by Concerto Köln in 1999. Two of his piano concertos, op 32 & 40, were recorded in 2011 for CPO by Die Kölner Akademie under Michael Alexander Willens with Paolo Giacometti and Riko Fukuda as soloists. His concerto for two pianos op. 43 was recorded by the same team and was released in 2018. His trio for piano, clarinet and cello, Op. 36, has been described by Professor Maurice Hinson as "one of the most valuable trios written for this combination during the classical period."

The Berlin Musical Journal wrote in 1805: "Since the symphonies of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, nothing but this symphony has been written which could be placed alongside theirs." Eberl's Symphony in E-flat major was premiered at the same concert as Beethoven's Eroica Symphony in the same key on 7 April 1805, and (see above) was compared favorably with it.[3] (as cited also in Elliot Forbes' 1967 revision [Princeton University Press] of Alexander Wheelock Thayer's unfinished, but classic, late-nineteenth-century biography originally completed c. 1920 by Henry Krehbiel).

References

  1. ↑ Randel, Don Michael (1996). The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music. Belknap Press. p. 238.
  2. ↑ Eisen, Cliff (2006). The Cambridge Mozart Encyclopedia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 152. ISBN 0-521-85659-0. OCLC 60245611.
  3. ↑ Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed., 1954, Eric Blom, ed.
  • The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Macmillan 1980
  • The Piano in Chamber Ensemble, M. Hinson, Indiana University Press 1978
  • Article for Ramee Records, Van Bruggen et al., 2006


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