Piano Concerto in D major Hob.VIII:11 (1780–3?)

Haydn’s Concerto for Piano (or Harpsichord) in D major was once one of the most popular works of its kind – as the publishers of the day acknowledged by issuing seven or eight rival editions within the first ten years of its existence. Since then it has been overshadowed not only by Mozart’s piano concertos but also by Haydn’s own trumpet and cello concertos. Even so, it has retained a firm place in the repertoire, mainly perhaps because of its irresistible Hungarian Rondo.

While the first two movements are less exotic in colour, they are scsarcely less resisitible. Once the ear has registered the basically two-bar theme on violins at the start of the opening Vivace, it remains enthralled by the constant extension and renewal of the melodic interest of that initially modest little tune. One way Haydn has of doing it – though reserved mainly for the development section – is to take the three notes of the second bar of the thme and scatter them through every level of the texture, either in their original (anapestic) rhythm or in some kind of variant. Before that Haydn presents the theme in all kinds of harmonic, rhythmic and textural situations and, after the piano has made its first entry with that same theme, he treats it to the full panoply of bravura keyboard figurations. The last recall of the three-note motif comes just before the cadenza where – in the absence of a cadenza by the composer himself – the soloist has to choose between making a further feature of the three notes or, since they have already had much attention, leaving them out.

Much of the beauty of the A-major slow movement is melodic, though not so much in the main theme itself as in its linear elaboration in a sensitively expressive and inexhaustibly inventive solo part offset by deliberately pedestrian orchestral interventions. A cloud passes over in the E-minor middle section, making a once serene rhythmic figure seem distinctly uneasy but at the same time preparing the way for a consoling return to the major.

One advantage Haydn had over his Viennese contemporaries in living and working out in the country at Esterháza, which he didn’t much like, is that the area was regularly visited by Hungarian gypsy bands. He enjoyed their music, collected it and made a study of it – or so it would seem from the authentic detail of the several pieces he wrote in the idiom (not only the finales to this work and the Piano Trio No.25 in G major but several quartet movements too). Decades ahead of similarly zestful examples by Brahms, the Rondo all’Ungarese must have amazed Haydn’s contemporaries with its thrillingly alien harmonies, drone accompaniments, syncopations and piquant melodic decoratioons as well as its unfailingly physical exhilaration.

Although the first editions of the Concerto in D appeared in 1784, the exact date of its composition is a matter for conjecture. So is the question whether it was written in response to a commission from Vienna or, as the last movement might seem to suggest, for Haydn himself to play at Esterháza.