Viola Concerto in D major

Franz Anton Hoffmeister (1754–1812) trained as a lawyer in Vienna and then made his living as a publisher, issuing first editions of Mozart, Haydn and the young Beethoven; the Leipzig branch he founded in 1800 became the house of C. F. Peters. He composed steadily alongside the business, and the D major viola concerto is the piece that has kept his name on concert programmes, largely because the eighteenth century left so few concertos for the instrument. Its three movements sit high in the viola's range and treat it as a lyric soloist rather than an inner voice.