Haydn, Sinfonia Concertante

The sinfonia concertante as a genre came to prominence in the 1770s. These concertos for multiple instruments were hugely popular in Paris and also in London, where the musical scene was dominated by J. S. Bach’s youngest son Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782) and the Bach-Abel Concerts (1765-1781). Given the popularity of this genre, it comes as no surprise that Haydn chose to write one for the Salomon concerts during his first trip to London (1791-92).

The concerto is scored for an orchestra and a quartet of solo instruments (oboe, bassoon, violin and cello, and with Salomon himself playing the violin part), and the treatment of this solo quartet varies from one movement to the other. In the first movement, they are taken as a single group operating under a unified purpose and their interaction with the orchestra is similar to that found in solo concertos – notwithstanding certain deviations from the generic model. The topic of the lyrical second movement is that of timbre; here the music explores the different kinds of sound that can be had from this group by constantly shuffling the duet theme among the four instruments. After two movements of balanced treatment of the quartet, the violin takes control in the last movement by invoking a peculiar appropriation of vocal music that could be found in Haydn’s 7^th Symphony Le midi and also later in Beethoven’s 9^th. After this interruption, the soloists all burst into virtuosic displays in a light-hearted manner that is the hallmark of this genre.

November 2012