String Quartet in E flat major, Op.71, No.3

Although the dedicatee of the six quartets Haydn wrote in Austria in 1793 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 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 a virtuoso ensemble before a paying audience in a comparatively large hall in London in 1794.

One consequence of this new situation is that all six of the Op.71 and Op.74 quartets begin with some kind of introduction, even if it is no more than the short chord and long pause at the beginning of Op.71, No.3. It is a characteristically witty start to a movement that finds infinite interest in one tiny idea - the three repeated quavers which, quietly but subversively, echo through the opening statements of the main theme. Little is heard of them in the rest of the exposition but they reverberate through the development and, in case we should miss them, they make their first reappearance in the recapitulation ornamented with crush notes to add bounce to their distinctive rhythm.

Another special quality of the 1793 quartets is their brilliance - technical brilliance, as Salomon’s first violin part has already demonstrated, and intellectual brilliance too. The Andante con moto is a highly ingenious combination of Haydn’s double variation form - on themes in B flat major and B flat minor respectively - with rondo form. It is scored most effectively for a rueful viola, an adventurous cello and, a new sound in its day, the upper registers of the top three instruments in a luminous texture of staccato semiquavers. Offset by a leisurely Menuetto (though not so leisurely trio), the Finale offers more examples of textural brilliance as it develops into a double fugue in a central episode and a dramatic stretto towards the end.