Symphony No.63 in C major (“La Roxelane”)

After the opening of the new opera house at Esterháza in 1768 Haydn’s duties as Kapellmeister to Prince Nikolaus Esterházy involved him more and more with the theatre, leaving him less and less time for composing symphonies. He continued to write them but not always in the most favourable of circumstances. Symphony No.63 in C major was originally put together out of music he compiled for a play called Soliman II or the Three Sultanas which was performed at Esterháza in 1777. The first movement was the overture to the play (and before that the overture to his opera Il Mondo della luna) and the other three - including the “La Roxelane” second movement - were all items of incidental music. Later, while retaining the first two movements more or less as they were, Haydn replaced the last two with a new minuet and a new finale.

The opening Allegro betrays its origins as an overture in its resourcefully sustained air of anticipation. From the start, as its bustling main theme passes from strings to woodwind and back again, it accumulates pressure, letting none of it go in the more smoothly articulated but still highly mobile second subject. A change of harmony to C minor at the beginning of the development section adds still more tension.

In its first life the opening Allegro generated expectancy before the rise of the curtain on Haydn’s opera Il Mondo della luna and in its second it did much the same thing for Soliman II or the Three Sultanas. Here it leads towards a theme and variations movement named after the heroine of the play, La Roxelane - which, as we know from the early publication of its theme as a popular song all over Europe, was anything but an anti-climax in its day. The tune that opens the movement on first violins does indeed have something of the quality of a folk song about it. Having discovered a winner, while he sets up a regular alternation between C minor and C major allied with imaginative changes in instrumental colour, Haydn makes sure that none of the four variations or the extended coda strays very far from the basic melodic shape.

The last two movements (which replace the two originally drawn from the incidental music) are an entertaining Minuet with a delightful Trio section featuring solo oboe and bassoon and a vigorous Finale with a brilliant little episode of counterpoint in the middle and an inexhaustible supply of energy throughout.