for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings

Largo-Vivace
Adagio
Menuetto: Allegro
Finale: Presto

Program Notes by Martin Pearlman

Haydn wrote his Symphony No. 102 in 1794, during his second triumphant visit to London.  Many writers have considered this the most powerful, brilliant and interesting of Haydn's late symphonies, but it is not as well known or frequently performed as some of the other symphonies that he wrote for London.  Perhaps it has suffered from being the only one of the last five not to have a nickname.  (The "Military," "Clock," "Drum Roll," and "London" symphonies are its companions.)  In actual fact, it was defrauded of the best name of all. The story is told that, at the premiere, a large and heavy chandelier fell from the ceiling during the finale, but because the audience had pressed forward to watch Haydn more closely, the middle of the hall was empty and no one was hurt.  However, the incident was later confused with the premiere of Haydn's Symphony No. 96, which had taken place four years earlier, and that symphony is now known as the "Miracle," while Symphony No. 102 remains nameless.

The work is dense with musical motives.  Haydn scholar H. C. Robbins Landon has called it "Haydn's loudest and most aggressive Symphony, at least in the outer movements."  The first movement opens with a beautifully expressive slow introduction, which bursts into a brilliant and boisterous Vivace.  The Adagio that follows is a subtle and extraordinary movement, with slow, sustained melodic lines over a gently flowing sextuplet accompaniment, which is played in places by a solo cello.  When he later revised this movement, Haydn added mutes for the trumpets, as well as for the timpani.  It is a slow movement for which Haydn seems to have had a particular fondness, for he used it again in his great Trio in F# minor.  Following a foot-stomping, peasant-like Menuetto, the symphony concludes with one of Haydn's many "joke finales," a movement that continually teases with unexpected returns of the main theme, false beginnings of the theme, and sudden changes of character.  The whole symphony is a kaleidoscope, which Robbins Landon has likened to the contemporary description of the composer's "lightning-swift facial changes."

Boston Baroque Performances

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