Symphony in D minor Op.12 No.4, G506 (“La casa del Diavolo”)

Fétis’s famous comment on Boccherini, whose scores he found “so remarkable that one would be tempted to believe that he has never known any other music but his own,” was perceptively made. It could not, however, be applied to the most famous of his 27 symphonies, “La casa del Diavolo” (The Devil’s house), which has attracted its nickname precisely because its last movement is based on a detailed knowledge of Gluck’s representation of Hades in his ballet Don Juan or the Stone Guest. Boccherini might well have seen the ballet on its first performance in Vienna in 1761. Certainly, ten years later - having in the meantime settled in Spain, where he would spend the rest of his life - he made a very sincere tribute to his much admired older colleague in this Symphony in D minor.

The whole work seems to have been written with that vividly descriptive last movement in mind. The dramatic Andante sostenuto introduction to the first movement, for example, with its threatening opening gestures and the plaintive replies from the strings, could almost be Boccherini’s own idea of the underworld. The atmosphere is brighter in the main Allegro assai section which, however, retains the vigorous activity initiated by the percussive repeated notes of the opening theme in spite of the intervention of a more melodious second subject. The Andante con moto, with its tiptoeing articulations and its rhythmic syncopations, seems, for all its dynamic restraint and its delicate scoring for strings, more than a little apprehensive about what is to come.

Before making his tribute to Gluck, Boccherini recalls the Andante sostenuto introduction to the first movement, which now leads directly into what he calls a “chaconne depicting Hell, which was written in imitation of that by Mr. Gluck in The Stone Guest.” If the menacingly striding opening theme seems familiar even to someone who does not know Don Juan or the Stone Guest, it could be because Gluck himself re-cycled his Hades music in the underworld scene of his now very much more familiar opera Orphée et Eurydice. Although most of the ideas are Gluck’s, Boccherini handles his material with unfailing dramatic skill and a mastery of instrumental colour not normally associated with a composer known for his chamber music rather than his symphonies.