Flute Concerto in D major

Mozart probably knew Michael Haydn better than he knew his older and more distinguished brother Joseph. Certainly, from his appointment as Konzertmeister in 1763 Michael Haydn was a prominent member of the Archbishop’s musical establishment in Salzburg where Mozart grew up and, under the direction of his father, developed his professional skills. Mozart is known to have collaborated with his older colleague on an oratorio when he was no more than eleven and he was evidently so impressed by his Requiem for Archbishop Sigismund in 1771 that he retained a memory of it when he came to write the Requiem in D minor twenty years later.

It was also in 1771 or thereabouts - the date is uncertain - that Michael Haydn wrote the second of his two Concertos in D for flute, horns and strings. Although Mozart could have known it, he does not seem to have been influenced by it. The similarities between it and Mozart’s own Flute Concertos, written in a rather more modern classical style in 1778, are shared by countless other woodwind concertos of the time. That is not to say that the Haydn Concerto does not have its own, distinctive personality. The first movement, based on the cheerful theme introduced by violins in the opening bars, presents the flute not only as a virtuoso instrument apart but also as a sociable participant in dialogue with the strings. The central slow movement, from which horns are excluded, makes sensitive use of the expressive bottom register of the instrument. But what is most distinctive about the work is the Allegro assai, a brisk rondo featuring at its centre a surprisingly dramatic episode which involves the soloist in a fiery kind of bravura quite unlike anything in either of Mozart’s flute concertos.