String Quartet in D major Op.71 No.2 (1793)

Written in anticipation of his second visit to London, Haydn’s Op.71 Quartets are unlike all his earlier chamber music in that they were written specifically for public performance by an ensemble of soloists before a paying audience in a comparatively large hall. So, while there might be some loss of intimacy, there is certainy a gain in brilliance. The main Allegro section of the first movement of Op.71 No.2 is a dizzy experience, not least because of a virtuoso violin part written for Johann Peter Salomon. Another gain from the new public rather than private orientation is the expansiveness of a slow movement like the luxuriantly scored Adagio cantabile of this work. If, after a scherzo-like Menuetto, the Allegretto tempo of the finale seems rather slow for the nature of its 6/8 material, that is exactly what Haydn intended - the point being that, after frustrating expectations for the larger part of the movement, he suddenly fulfils them in a final and exhilarating Allegro.

The dedicatee of the six quartets Haydn wrote in 1793, between his two visits to England, was count Apponyi, a brother Freemason and an influential member of musical society in Vienna. The personality the composer had in mind as he scored them, however, was Johann Peter Salomon - violinist and impresario of Haydn’s concerts in London. In fact, unlike all his earlier chamber music, they were written specifically for public performance by an ensemble of soloists before a paying audience in a comparatively large hall.

While, in consequence, there might be some loss of intimacy in these works, there is certainly a gain in brilliance. The first movement of Op.71 No.2 after the short Adagio introduction, is a dizzy experience deriving from the persistent feature of the octave leaps in the first theme of the Allegro and the sustained semiquaver runs in Salomon’s first violin part. Haydn has a way, moreover, of proceeding by way of the octave leaps into unexpected harmonies - which happens even at as late a stage as the coda, just before the tonality is restored to D major in the last few bars.

Another gain from the public rather than private orientation of these works is the expansiveness of the slow movements. Although the Adagio cantabile of Op.71 No.2, is based almost exclusively on the fairly simple opening melody in A major, it is given also to voluptuous chromatic inflection, to luxuriant scoring (in a prophetically romantic manner in places) and to startling shifts in tonality. A central episode in C major is as effective as it is unexpected.

The Menuetto, a scherzo in all but name, is in a textural sense a summary of what has happened so far: the outer sections feature a variant of the octave leaps and inversions familiar from the first movement; the central trio section reverts to the legato style of the Adagio cantabile. If the Allegretto tempo of the finale seems rather slow for the nature of its 6/8 material that is exactly what Haydn intended - the point being, of course, that after frustrating expectations for the larger part of the movement he suddenly fulfils them in a final and exhilarating Allegro.