NAXOS CLASSICAL MUSIC LIBRARY

Noon classics
on Haydn's keyboard

Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D major

(Hob. XVIII:11) is his third and final

concerto for the harpsichord or pianoforte.

Though doubtless one of his most
familiar works, it raises a number of unanswered
questions. We do not know
when it was composed, or for what occasion.
The autograph manuscript is no
longer extant. Nor is the work entered in
any of Haydn’s catalogues. None the
less, the text is sufficiently substantiated
by the Viennese first edition, published
in August 1784 by Artaria (a Paris edition
had appeared a short while before),
and by a partial manuscript copy prepared
by the Viennese copyist Johann
Radnitzky, who occasionally worked for Haydn.
Haydn’s reasons for writing another
piano concerto around 1783 were probably
more than commercial. Presumably
his interest was kindled by Mozart’s
activities in Vienna. In January 1783,
Mozart offered three new piano concertos
on subscription and played them at
public “academies”. (They were later
published by Artaria.) By the spring of
1784 he had written several further
concertos, thereby laying the groundwork
for the genre’s prestige in Vienna.
It is worth noting that Johann Radnitzky
also wrote out Mozart’s piano concertos
– whoever his employer may have
been.
Haydn’s D-major Concerto is scored
for two oboes, two horns and strings,
with a bassoon tacitly understood to
double the bass line. It has never left the
repertoire. The “exotic” Rondo all’Ungarese in particular caused a sensation.
At the end of the last century its Hungarian
origins were seriously called into
question, and its dance themes were
thought to be patterned after the “siri
kolo” danced in Bosnia and Dalmatia.
But Bálint Sárosi recently unearthed parallels to the tradition of Transylvanian
gipsy music and demonstrated that
the movement has features in common
with earlier Hungarian bagpipe music
and the “verbunkos” style.