String Quartet in C major, Op.54, No.2 (Hob.III.58) [1787-88]

Although Haydn might have suspected Johann Tost’s integrity as a businessman even before he left the orchestra at Esterháza for the wholesale trade in Vienna, he always had great admiration for him as a violinist. It was not so much his technical accomplishment that Haydn admired - he could even be a little satirical about Tost’s rare facility in the highest register of the instrument - as his wit and the quality of his imagination. That much is clear from the trust he placed in his comic timing in the Finale of Op.54, No.1, and in his expressive spontaneity in the extravagantly scored slow movements of Op.54, Nos.2 and 3. Haydn was perhaps less wise in entrusting him also with the responsibility of taking Op.54 and Op.55 to sell to a publisher in Paris: they were immediately accepted by Sieber, for publication in 1789, but on what terms Tost was curiously reluctant to say.

While the six Quartets of Op.54 and Op.55 are not actually inscribed to Tost, incidentally, it is evident from the distinctive nature of the first violin parts and the parallels between them and those of the later Op.64 set, which is specifically dedicated “to wholesaler Tost,” that they were written with him firmly in mind.

One of the many attractive aspects of the twelve Tost Quartets is the composer’s eagerness to share a joke with the violinist. Haydn sets one up at the beginning of the first movement of the Quartet in C major where each the two opening statements of the main theme on first violin is followed by a bar’s rest. Reserving the punch-line till later, Haydn plunges without modulation into A flat major and projects his violinist through a strenous series of modulations before arriving, by a round-about route, at G major for the second subject. The participation of viola and second violin in the melodic interest here provokes Tost’s violin into a characteristically showy ascent to the far end of the fingerboard. All four instruments, however, take a virtuoso part in the short but dramatic development - which, in its turn, provokes the punch-line as, on recalling the opening theme at the beginning of the recapitulation, the first violin fills in the rests with a mischievous echo of the preceding bar an octave higher.

Perhaps the greatest tribute to Tost’s musicianship is Haydn’s gift to him here of two extraordinary slow movements. The C minor Adagio is particularly remarkable in that, having introduced its seriously thoughtful theme over chorale-like harmonies in the rest of the ensemble, the first violin leaves the melodic line to be carried by second violin - not out of modesty but, on the contrary, to weave round it an opulently decorative commentary of a sort which, with its written-in hesitations and rubatos, Haydn can only have learned from the improvisations of gypsy fiddle players.

The regular progress of the Adagio, which proceeds like a passacaglia in eight-bar cycles, gives way without a break and without a proper ending to the Menuetto. It is as though the Adagio had been a preparation for the minuet rather than a slow movement in itself - although in that case it would be a disproportionately long and expressive prelude to a minuet movement which, in spite of its C minor Trio section, is no more serious than most of its kind.

So, having disorientated structural expectations in this way, Haydn takes the opportunity to present an unprecedented finale construction. Surely, this C major Adagio , his contemporaries must have thought, is a prelude to a quicker main section. It too might seem rather long for that purpose and, as its harmonies turn to C minor, too expressive but, sure enough, the tempo does indeed change to a sprightly Presto. That C major Presto turns out, however, to be no more than a brief interlude in a finale that ends in the Adagio tempo and the contemplative mood in which it began.