Giovanni Simone Mayr: Concerto No.2 for Piano and Orchestra, in C major

Giovanni Simone Mayr

(14 June 1763 – 2 December 1845) was a German composer.

Concerto No.2 for Piano and Orchestra, in C major

I. Allegro Moderato – 00:00
II. Andantino con variazioni – 10:33
III. Allegro Moderato – 15:35

The German-born Simon Mayr, under the name Giovanni Simone Mayer, became the leading opera composer in Italy in the generation just before the rise of Rossini (he lived most of his life in Italy, so he was really considered to be Italian).
Mayr was a fast developer and at the age of ten could play the keyboard sonatas of C.P.E. Bach and Schobert, having been taught by his father, a schoolmaster and organist. Mayr attended the Ingolstadt Jesuit College and in 1781, enrolled in the city's university to study theology. He started composing and published a collection of lieder in 1786. Thomas von Bassus, a Swiss freeholder, got wind of Mayr's musical talent and in 1787 took him to Italy for formal musical studies. Mayr studied with Carlo Lenzi, cathedral music-master of Bergamo, who recognized his talent and referred the youth on to Venice in 1789 or 1790.

The success made him one of the best-known names in Italian opera, with several of his major operas played in such centers as Vienna, Berlin, Weimar, Stuttgart, Warsaw, Dublin, London, New York, and Philadelphia. In 1802, Mayr became maestro di cappella of the cathedral in Bergamo and in 1805, director of the choir school there as well. He held those offices for the rest of his life. Early in the 1820s, Mayr developed cataracts and he wrote his last opera in 1824 before going completely blind by 1826. He founded the Philharmonic Society of Bergamo in 1822.

Mayr generally maintained the style and techniques of the previous generation of Neapolitan opera composers. He shows only minimal influence of composers such as Mozart, Haydn, or Beethoven, even though as a conductor and organizer of concerts he took care to introduce their music to Bergamo. However, in orchestration he was fairly innovative and introduced the technique of increasing loudness by piling on instruments, now generally known as the "Rossini crescendo," before Rossini did. Rightly called the “philosopher” by Rossini, he chose the subjects for his compositions with great care, and never agreed to write anything that did not comply with own his ideas in the fields of opera and sacred music, but he also left behind two undated piano concerti that sound just like Mozart, but probably date no earlier than the 1830s.