Cello Concerto in C major Hob.VIIb:1

Cellists, who had always put a high value on Haydn’s Concerto in D, were long frustrated by the apparent loss of another one, known from the composer’s catalogue to be in C major. When an eighteenth-century manuscript copy of the Concerto in C was eventually discovered in a library in Czechoslovakia in 1961 it proved, to their joy, to be quite worthy of its companion in D. Written some time between 1762 and 1765, it is clearly an earlier work, with more than a little of the baroque in it, and it is not quite as difficult perhaps. Joseph Weigl, the Esterházy cellist at the time, though obviously an accomplished instrumentalist, had not yet acquired some of the techniques developed by Anton Kraft, for whom the Concerto in D was written two decades later. It is no less attractive for that.

Since it corresponds neither to the baroque nor to the classical model - though it is closer to the latter - the Moderato first movement is both elusive and, to all appearances, thoroughly spontaneous in form. The elaborately chivalrous main theme, presented by oboes and violins in the opening bars, is clear enough. There is, on the other hand, no defintive companion to it. The gracious melody introduced by violins certainly approximates to one, but the cello itself, which alludes to it not long after the sonorous first solo entry with the main theme, never repeats it in its original form. Although it is developed alongside the bravura episodes in the middle of the movement, it is not formally recalled.

The Adagio is a based on a melody so elegant that it alone - there is no other main theme - gives the soloist ample opportunity to demonstrate how to sustain a supple and eloquent line on the A-string. The Allegro molto Finale is based on virtually one theme too. But in a movement as impulsive as this, the orchestra carrying the soloist irresistibly along with it, the thematic uniformity enhances the impression of breathless non-stop virtuoso activity.

It has always been known that Haydn wrote a Cello Concerto in C major since he listed one in his own catalogue of his works. For more than a hundred and fifty years after the composer’s death, however, it seemed to be irretrievably lost – to the frustration of cellists who, aware of the quality of the Concerto in D major written for Anton Kraft, would gladly have welcomed another such work in the repertoire. When an eighteenth-century manuscript copy of the Concerto in C was eventually discovered – in a library in Czechoslovakia in 1961 – it proved to be quite worthy of its companion in D. Written some time between 1762 and 1765, it is clearly an earlier work, with more than a little of the baroque in it, and it is not quite as difficult perhaps: Joseph Weigl, the Esterházy cellist at the time, though obviously an accomplished instrumentalist, had not yet acquired some of the techniques developed by Kraft two decades later. It is no less attractive for that.

Since it corresponds neither to the baroque nor to the classical model – though it is closer to the latter – the Moderato first movement is both elusive and, to all appearances, thoroughly spontaneous in form. The elaborately chivalrous main theme, presented by oboes and violins in the opening bars, is clear enough. There is, on the other hand, no defintive second subject. The gracious melody introduced by violins certainly approximates to one, but the cello itself, which alludes to it not long after the sonorous first solo entry on the main theme, never repeats it in its original form. Although it is developed alongside the bravura episodes in the middle of the movement, it is not formally recapitulated.

The F major Adagio is a based on a melody so elegant that it alone – there is no other main theme – gives the soloist ample opportunity to demonstrate how to sustain a supple and eloquent line on the A-string. The Allegro molto Finale is virtually monothematic too, in that the second theme is a simple variant of the first. But in a movement as impulsive as this, the orchestra carrying the soloist irresistibly along with it, the thematic uniformity enhances the impression of breathless non-stop virtuoso activity.

Gerald Larner©