Piano Sonata in C major H.XVI/50 (1794)

Haydn’s last three piano sonatas and his last three piano trios are all dedicated to Teresa Jansen, wife of the art dealer Gaetano Bartolozzi. A pupil of Muzio Clementi and herself one of the most successful piano teachers in London, she must have been not only a highly accomplished performer but also an uncommonly intelligent and sensitive musician. That much is clear from the quality of the music Haydn wrote for her.

The outer movements of the Sonata in C major call for a well developed and subtle sense of humour. The main source of interest in the opening Allegro is not the descending arpeggio of the main theme but the witty use Haydn makes of the two-note rhythm associated with it. It is heard thirteen times in the first six bars and it is prominent also, though in a slightly different form, in the following transitional passage. When the descending arpeggio is presented in G major as the first theme of the second subject, attention is engaged not so much by that characteristic example of thematic economy as by Haydn’s further variations on the two notes. While not forgetting them, the development is concerned with more serious matters, like the dramatic modulation to F minor and the equally dramatic if very quiet legato appearance of the main theme in A flat major. In the recapitulation that legato version of the main theme is reintroduced where the second subject would conventionally be, overlaid with syncopations in yet another variant of the two-note rhythm.

Although the F major Adagio was not written specifically for Teresa Jansen - it was published separately in Vienna from a copy that must have written before the composer left for London - she was entrusted with one of the most expressive of Haydn’s slow movements. It displays an extraordinary, almost improvisatory harmonic and melodic freedom throughout but above all in the events that follow the short development. In the much altered reprise of the opening section it plunges without warning into F minor and, emerging effortlessly from that, presents a new version of the second subject, now diversified by rhythmic syncopations, and a lingering coda.

In the Allegro molto, an ingenious combination of scherzo and finale, Haydn’s happily restored sense of humour inspires not only the numerous repetitions of the one main theme but also the disconcerting pauses between them.