Joseph Haydn
Sinfonia concertante in B flat major, Hob. I:105 Joseph Haydn Sinfonia concertante in B flat major, Hob. I:105

A shrewd concert promoter, a healthy dose of productive rivalry, a supremely inventive composer, and an audience hungry for the latest sensation: in the spring of 1792, all of this converged in London. Joseph Haydn had by then spent fourteen months in the British metropolis, and for just as long his presence had been the talk of the city’s concert life. Enthusiasm for the composer and his music showed no sign of fading, filling his own pockets as well as those of Johann Peter Salomon. It was Salomon, an enterprising impresario, who had succeeded in bringing Haydn to London at the end of 1790 – much to the displeasure of rival concert promoters, chief among them Wilhelm Cramer, who only a few years earlier had tried in vain to secure the composer for his own subscription series.

Cramer, however, was no less astute a businessman. He turned to a trump card from within Haydn’s own circle, inviting Ignaz Pleyel for the 1792 concert season. Pleyel’s music had already proved a hit with London audiences, and in February 1792 – such was the demand – his Sinfonia concertante received its third performance in the city. Fun fact: Pleyel was once Haydn’s pupil. For the English press, eagerly sharpening its quills in anticipation of a bitter duel between two superstars, this was a gift too good to pass up. Yet the papers had reckoned without the men themselves. “Pleyel behaved so modestly towards me on his arrival,” Haydn reported to Vienna, “that he won my affection anew; we are together very often, which does him credit, and he values his father. We shall share our fame equally, and each go home content.”

Haydn was confident that his “credit is too firmly established” for any Pleyel to challenge his pre-eminence in London’s concert life. All the same, he too dashed off a Sinfonia concertante in great haste – very likely at the urging of his employer Salomon, who knew that this curious hybrid, hovering somewhere between concerto and symphony, was all the rage across Europe just then. The form has its roots in the baroque concerto grosso, pitting the orchestral tutti against a small group of solo instrumentalists. In Haydn’s Sinfonia concertante in B flat major, Hob. I:105, there are four of them: violin, cello, oboe and bassoon. With this mix of strings and winds, Haydn conjures one appealing combination of sound after another, while giving each soloist their fair share of virtuosic display. One instrument, however, stands out clearly, answering the tutti at the opening of the finale with some decidedly weighty “words”: the violin – for at the premiere on 9 March 1792, that part was taken by none other than Johann Peter Salomon himself. With this gesture, Haydn paid tribute to his business partner and created a win–win situation: Cramer and Pleyel could both claim great success – but in this contest, it was ultimately Haydn, Salomon and “Salomon’s Concerts” who came out on top.