PapaHaydn's video: Haydn Symphony N 104 in B Flat Major Hob I:102

Philharmonia Orchestra, Giuseppe Sinopoli, conductor. Haydn wrote his last three symphonies (Nos. 102-104) during the second half of his second stay in London for the Opera Concerts, which Johann Peter Salomon initiated in 1795 with several leading London musicians after his own concert series, the Salomon Concerts, were discontinued. The concert master of the orchestra was the famous violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti, for whom the extensive violin solo in Symphony No. 103 was intended. The Symphony in B-Flat Major (No. 102), the first of this group of three, was published on 2 February 1795 in the scope of a series of events whose concerts took place at the Haymarket Theatre. As is almost always the case in Haydn's "Salomon" symphonies, No. 102 begins with a slow introduction. A soft, solemn chord for full orchestra complete with timpani roll announces an equivocal Largo string theme that seems unsure of its direction; the chord is repeated, and then the theme returns at greater length, finally displaced by an exuberant Allegro vivace that is essentially an elaboration of the introduction. Unusually for Haydn during this period, the movement's second subject is completely independent, rather than a variation of the first; though punctuated by two loud chords it is comparatively subdued, and hints at the minor. The development is one of Haydn's most extensive and dramatic, with the two themes trading off quickly and sometimes overlapping. The straightforward recapitulation is topped off with an unusually stormy coda. After transposition to F-sharp major the slow movement (F major) is encountered in the Piano Trio in F-Sharp Minor (Hob. XV: 26), likewise written in 1795. This is presumably a tribute by Haydn to his admirer and lover Mrs. Schroeter, who found the movement to the symphony extraordinary and to whom the piano trio is dedicated. With its involuted main theme, which undergoes several metamorphoses, this movement carries a light melancholy that hints at something deeper in its very few brass-reinforced climaxes. There is a palpable contradiction between the merry minuet and its melancholy trio. The Minuet lightens the mood again, with its insouciant theme speckled with grace notes at the beginning of almost every bar. The trio section, carried mainly by the oboe and bassoon, just barely suggests the wistfulness of the slow movement, but this is swept away by the return of the first section. The presto finale, again a sonata rondo, is another merry kehraus marked by humorous effects. The composer works here with short motifs which he kaleidoscopically whirls around in brilliant combinations of sound. The Presto finale has no room for melancholy. It's built on one of Haydn's typical quick string tunes, here interrupted by little sputters from the woodwinds. The melody enjoys a thorough development through the course of the movement, with strenuous, proto-Beethovenian moments scraping against witty episodes that could have been easily transplanted into any French opera overture written in the next five decades. Commentators, in fact, stress the junctures at which this symphony forecasts the coming of Beethoven: the forceful unisons that stop the motion of the opening movement, the conclusion of the second movement which is unusually muscular for such a gentle movement, the rather rowdy minuet, and the frequent balance between loud and soft statements in the last movement.