Jan Hugo Voríšek, the ‘prodigy from Prague’, arrived in Vienna at the age of twenty-two and almost immediately earned the approval and admiration of Beethoven. His earliest works foreshadow German Romanticism, but he remained so individualistic a composer that he resists easy categorisation either as a Classicist or a Romantic. His works were written within a nine-year span of his sadly short life but in that time he mastered sonata form, Rhapsodies and Impromptus to become one of Vienna’s leading composers. The third volume of this exploratory series charts the Rhapsodies, Op.1 of the Czech-born Jan Hugo Voríšek, later to establish himself as one of Vienna’s greatest composers. They were largely written in Prague and are rigorous in form and poetic in spirit. Some of the twelve embody elements of Romanticism, prefiguring the later works of Chopin and Schumann, and their ardent lyricism establishes Voríšek as one of the pioneers of the rhapsody in music.
