Carmen Piazzini piano
Michail Gantvarg violin · conductor
St. Petersburg Soloists

Joseph Haydn Concertos

The present-day listener thinks of Haydn as “the pioneer of the symphony, the string quartet and the piano sonata”. Beyond this, his compositions in other instrumental genres are in danger of being undervalued. In the case of the solo concerto, there is the additional difficulty that in the second half of the 18th century this field was dominated by the compositions of W.A. Mozart. Joseph Haydn’s concerto writing also belongs, apart from a few exceptions, to a period in which the socalled Viennese classical style was only beginning to take shape, namely the 1760s.

The Concerto for Violin and Keyboard in F major is probably one of Haydn’s earliest works. The occasion for the composition was the entry of Haydn’s first great love, Therese Keller, into the convent, in the year 1756. The authenticity is also assured by Haydn’s entry in his autograph catalogue of works, the socalled draft catalogue. G. A. Griesinger, Haydn’s biographer and representative of the publishing house Breitkopf & Härtel, informed his employer in 1803 of the rediscovery of the concerto, which had occurred shortly before. In Griesinger’s letter the instrumentation is given as organ and violin. However, there is nothing in the musical idiom of the solo part that speaks against a performance with piano or harpsichord.

The piece gains its special attraction from the fine interweaving of the solo parts and the resulting intimate dialogue of the two solo instruments.

The closing Rondo displays thematic relationships with two minuets, one of them Haydn’s own, from the Symphony No. 21, and the other, that of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik („A Little Night Music“).

The four violin concertos ascribed to Haydn, in C, D, A, and G, were all written in the 1760s. Of the second, we know only the incipit from the draft catalogue of his works that Haydn prepared in the middle of the 1760s. None of the works was printed during Haydn’s lifetime: it was not until the 20th century that they were made accessible to the general public. Breitkopf in Leipzig offered manuscript copies of the Concertos in C and G for sale in 1769.

Doubt is frequently cast on whether the G major Concerto is really from Haydn’s pen: it is not listed in the Haydn catalogue mentioned earlier. Stylistically, it employs an earlier idiom than the other two violin concertos. The Concerto in D major is the best known of the three surviving concertos for harpsichord or fortepiano. Neither autographs nor authorised copies of any of the three works have been preserved.

The D major Concerto was Haydn’s last composition for a keyboard instrument with orchestral accompaniment. It may have been written in 1780, and was first published in 1784 in Vienna, by Artaria, and in Paris, by Boyer. The use of a fortepiano was later authorised by Haydn with the description “Clavicembalo ò Fortepiano”.

It is the only concerto by Haydn in which he included wind instruments (two oboes and two French horns) in the orchestral accompaniment. Admittedly, they have scarcely any thematic or melodic function. The present recording is therefore restricted to the string section. The central part of the slow movement in A major is striking, due to the accentuated role of the key of E minor in addition to the usual major tonality (E major).

In the final movement, Haydn, who had so often and effectively adopted and reworked dance melodies, here uses one of Balkan origin in a scintillating Rondo all’ungherese based on a Croatian dance, named Siri Kolo. This music may have sounded very surprising for the Paris audience, which was not familiar with east central European music.