Symphony No. 57 in D Major
for 2 oboes, 2 horns and strings
Adagio-Allegro
Adagio
Menuet: Allegretto
Prestissimo
Program Notes by Martin Pearlman
Haydn's Symphony No. 57, dating from 1774, was written toward the end of a middle period in his symphonic output. It was a time when he was required to devote more and more of his energy to composing and conducting operas for his patron, Prince Nicolaus. Symphonic writing was thus not as much of a focus for Haydn as it was later in his career. Nonetheless, many of these middle period works, including this symphony, are beautiful and wonderfully inventive pieces.
The slow introduction that opens the first movement was unusual for the time. It was something of an experiment that became more common in Haydn's later symphonies, as it did in some of the late symphonies of Mozart and in Beethoven. The second movement is a set of variations with a surprising pizzicato motive that is both elegant and humorous at the same time. The third movement is an earthy minuet, not the courtly dance of old but something closer to a folk ländler or even a waltz. The finale is a demanding, virtuosic prestissimo, which Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon has called "one of the most difficult of Haydn's finales: this is a good piece to lay before modern orchestras who labor under the delusion that eighteenth-century players were all amateurs."
Haydn's original manuscript score is for two oboes and two horns with strings. There is surprisingly a timpani part that dates from five years after the piece was written, and trumpets are also listed by a publisher from that time. But if they ever existed, no trumpet parts have ever been found. Performances normally follow Haydn's original orchestration.
Boston Baroque Performances
Symphony No. 57 in D Major
February 21, 1986
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor