Haydn And Mozart: Symphonic Splendour by Mozart, Haydn, wo. 11 jan 2023, Van (2023/2023), Dirigent John Eliot Gardiner, Musikverein, Wenen, Oostenrijk

The English Baroque Soloists are joined by Isabelle Faust and Antoine Tamestit, two of the most revelatory and poetic performers working today, for a programme of dazzling orchestral works by Haydn and Mozart. They are the ideal partners for Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante, which plumbs the depths of pathos in its slow movement but also reveals sonorous grandeur, a yearning lyricism and, in the end, a skittish wit. The piece will be preceded by one of the symphonies which Haydn wrote in 1785-6 for the Parisian concert organisation Le concert de la Loge Olympique; in accordance with Parisian taste, it features colourful wind writing, and the second movement is an exquisite set of variations. Mozart and his wife Constanze were on their way from Salzburg to Vienna when they stopped for a few days in Linz at the invitation of their friend, Count Thun-Hohenstein. Mozart wrote in a letter on 31 October 1783 that a concert had been arranged for 4 November, and ‘I didn’t bring a single symphony with me, so I’ll have to write a new one at breakneck speed’. Despite that haste, his Symphony no 36 in C, nicknamed ‘Linz’, is one of his finest symphonies, venturing into uncharted territory (the opening movement is his first to include a slow introduction) and giving us a haunting slow movement, a Haydn-esque siciliana.