Johannes Brahms’s Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a were written in the summer of 1873, during the composer’s three-month stay in the picturesque town of Tutzing on Lake Starnberg. Brahms borrowed the theme, the St Anthony Chorale, from the second movement of Joseph Haydn’s Divertimento in B flat major (‘Feldpartita’), Hob II:46, although some researchers consider the melody to be a foreign interpolation and attribute its authorship to Ignaz Pleyel. Despite this uncertainty, Brahms’s score displays delightful orchestral craftsmanship. And although the composer considered the arrangement for two pianos (Op. 56b) to be equivalent, it was the orchestral version that music lovers rightly recognised as presaging Brahms’s first symphony.

Haydn’s Symphony in G major, Hob. I/92 was completed in 1789. Like the six earlier ‘Paris’ symphonies, it was commissioned by the well-known French aristocrat and patron Count Claude d’Ogny. It is called the ‘Oxford’ Symphony, because the composer personally conducted its performance in Oxford on 7 July 1791, during a ceremony in which he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the university. Enthusiastically received by the British audience at the time, the Symphony combines the optimism typical of the works of the Viennese classics with momentary flashes of melancholy, particularly noticeable in the second movement. The middle section of the Minuet (Trio) is characterised by hunting motifs in the horns. The Presto finale gives the impression of accompanying a lively ensemble scene from an opera buffa.

Robert Schumann composed his first full-length orchestral work after turning thirty, but it is also worth remembering that he found inspiration shortly after marrying his beloved Clara Wieck. The work was premiered on 31 March 1841 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, conducted by Felix Mendelssohn. Today, one gets the impression that the Symphony No. 1 in B flat major, Op. 38, known as the ‘Spring’ Symphony, exudes an omnipresent masculine optimism, perhaps reflecting the temporary fulfilment of hidden romantic and artistic longings. The four movements of the symphony initially had programmatic titles (‘The Beginning of Spring’, ‘Evening’, ‘Merry Playmates’, ‘Spring in Full Bloom’), which Schumann ultimately abandoned.
 

Grzegorz Zieziula