Franz Danzi (1763-1826)
Bassoon Concertos

In Danzi's time Europe enjoyed a flourishing musical culture. Artistically inclined members of the nobility supported opera and orchestral and chamber music in their houses and summer residences. Important composers of the period were engaged as directors of court music and those who took part were often well known and widely travelled artists. The court musical establishment in Mannheim, for example, had so many prominent musicians that Charles Burney in his journal of a tour that had taken him there could maintain that "...there are more solo players, and good composers in this, than perhaps in any other orchestra in Europe; it is an army of generals, equally to plan a battle, as to fight it." Franz Danzi was virtually born into this army on 15th May 1763, since his Italian father Innocenz had been employed as a cellist in the court orchestra of the Elector Karl Theodor from 1754