In 1961, an extraordinary discovery was made at the National Museum in Prague: the autograph manuscript of Joseph Haydn’s First Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, a work that had remained silent for two hundred years. News of the find spread quickly, and it was not long before the most celebrated cellists—among them Jacqueline du Pré and Mstislav Rostropovich—were recording it, alongside many others. Today, the concerto holds a firm place in concert programmes around the world, always with the apparent freshness of the very first day it was performed.
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It is certain that Haydn wrote two concertos for cello and orchestra: one in C major, dating from the first half of the 1760s, and another in D major, from 1783. There may also have been a third, whose score has been lost, and there are two others that are wrongly attributed to him in some publications. Around twenty years separate the composition of these two known works. The later concerto is widely regarded as a textbook example of the Classical style applied to the concerto form. The earlier work, however, joins the ranks of other rare concertos—written for violin, horn, and harpsichord—that allow us to “visit” the early phase of the Austrian composer’s career. It does not yet display the technical concision, thematic coherence, and dialectical structure that would make him one of the most influential figures in music history. It does, however, reveal the technical and artistic resources from which he started.
Joseph Haydn entered the service of Prince Esterházy in 1761. Shortly thereafter, several Viennese musicians he had recommended joined him. It was likely for these players that he composed concertos designed to showcase their abilities before the patron and his guests. The cellist Joseph Weigl is believed to have premiered this concerto as soloist, before the construction of the monumental palace by Lake Neusiedl, at a time when the court orchestra comprised barely a dozen musicians engaged ad hoc. Unusual for the period, the ensemble included two horns and two oboes, which served mainly to reinforce the orchestral tuttis, only occasionally taking independent lines. With its clear virtuosic intent, the concerto still reflects the model of the Baroque concerto grosso. Nevertheless, it also reveals the monothematic sonata form in all its movements—a sign of the innovative instinct whose period of gestation had come to an end.
Rui Campos Leitão
Image: Franz Joseph Haydn | Gravura de Francesco Bartolozzi 1791 | Source: BnF Gallica