Joseph Fiala

Concerto fa maggiore (ReiF 2.65)

Joseph Fiala of Bohemia (1748–1816), a widely traveled oboist, cellist, gambist, and composer, was a remarkable artist in many respects, whose life spanned the period between J.S. Bach and F. Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Through the mediation of Leopold Mozart, Fiala joined the Prince-Archbishop’s Chapel in Salzburg as principal oboist in 1778; its members included Leopold and Wolfgang Amadé Mozart as well as Michael Haydn. Leopold Mozart offered Fiala’s family an apartment at Getreidegasse 9, the birthplace of his children Maria Anna and Wolfgang Amadé, and a close friendship developed between the two families. When Fiala performed on the viola da gamba before the Prussian King Frederick William II in 1790, he was called "the finest viola da gamba player still alive." Through Carl Friedrich Abel and Joseph Fiala, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart maintained close, personal relationships with two of the most famous viola da gamba players of his era. The German gambist Thomas Fritzsch was unwilling to accept the unknown whereabouts of an orchestral gamba concerto by Joseph Fiala, whose former existence was attested to by an 1815 encyclopedia of artists. He finally found what he was looking for in the music library of the Benedictine Abbey of Engelberg (Switzerland).