First Chairs of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra vol. 3

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is made up of orchestral players of the highest international standing. Many of them can be heard not only in the orchestra but also regularly in chamber music performances. After all, the fabulous wealth of that repertoire is a rewarding challenge for any musician. In the CD series ‘First Chairs of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’, musicians submit their personal calling card, as it were, with their very own choice of music from their particular instrument’s repertoire. This is one of the ways that the orchestra can proudly introduce its musicians as individuals. And it is a project that could not have been realized without the help of the Stichting Donateurs Koninklijk Concertgebouworkest.

Any self-respecting 18th-century prince relied on enormous, extravagantly expensive hunting parties with dozens of horsemen and hundreds of dogs, whinnying horses, wild bursts of barking, and above all deafening blasts on the horns, as a reliable status symbol. But the horn was not only an outdoor instrument; it was also a well-loved denizen of many a palace music room. The instrument, in the course of the century, had evolved from being primarily an attribute of the hunt into a full-fledged member of the classical orchestra. Stopping technique became widespread around 1750: by moving the right hand inside the bell, the player was able to fill in the breaks in the horn’s natural scale, making it possible to play melodies. This changed the roaring brassiness of the hunting horn into a somewhat veiled, warmer sound associated with the French horn. (Valves were not added until the 19th century.)

Joseph Haydn entered the service of Prince Paul Anton Esterházy in Eisenstadt in 1761. The court possessed not only an enormous stretch of hunting land, where Haydn, a passionate hunter and fisherman, could have the time of his life, but also a small orchestra and a “Field band” which lent a festive air to the numerous open air celebrations. Paul Anton died in 1762, to be succeeded by his art-loving brother Nikolaus. Haydn was given the opportunity of expanding his orchestra while recruiting the very best musicians. In addition to Joseph Oliva and Franz Pauer, the horn players who were already part of the orchestra, the composer engaged the virtuosi Johannes Knoblauch and Taddäus Steinmüller in that very same year. A year later they were followed by Joseph Leutgeb, the famous hornist for whom Mozart would later compose his horn concerti. Leutgeb departed a month later, joining the Archepiscopal court in Salzburg; a few months afterwards, Franz Reiner and the horn and baryton virtuoso Carl Franz were recruited. During the first years of his sojourn in Eisenstadt, Haydn wrote at least three horn concerti, but only the so-called first horn concerto in D, Hob. VIId:3 (1762) has survived. He also composed symphonies with obbligato horn parts, in addition to a number of chamber works with solo parts for horns.

The Divertimento a tre per il corno da caccia, Hob IV:5 (1767) consists of a series of variations of steadily increasing virtuosity, ending in a cheerful rondo. The hornist is required to show off both the extreme high register and the very lowest pedal tones of his instrument. It is generally assumed that the polymath Carl Franz was the soloist envisioned by the composer.
It is not known for whom the Concerto per il corno da caccia was written. Leutgeb was a member of Haydn’s circle of friends during 1762. Apollonia, Haydn’s wife, stood godmother to Leutgeb’s baby daughter, who was baptized on 3 June 1762. Haydn’s concerto sets the bar considerably higher for the virtuoso than do Mozart’s horn concerti, but these latter concerti were only written some two decades later, at a time when Leutgeb (1732-1811) was at the end of his career. However, when we compare the present solo part with the frequently extremely difficult horn parts in Haydn’s symphonies of this period, then the other hornists may also be considered as possible dedicatees.

The so-called second horn concerto in D, Hob.VIId:4 cannot be found in Haydn’s “Entwurf-Katalog”. Breitkopf’s 1781 catalogue does cite the principal theme of this Concerto “da HAYDEN a Corno princ”. The only surviving copy of this concerto does not mention a composer, and describes the solo part as “corno principale secondo”, i.e. a second (=low) solo hornist. The wide leaps in the solo part are reminiscent of the pre-classical compositions written around 1750 by the circle around the Dresden hornists Hampel and Haudek, who taught Giovanni, the best-known horn virtuoso of the 18th century. Perhaps we are looking at an early work by Joseph Haydn or his younger brother, Michael.

At the same time as Leutgeb, Michael Haydn was appointed concertmaster and court composer at Salzburg. Before his departure for Salzburg, the younger Haydn had already written a concerto for Leutgeb in Vienna. This was followed in Salzburg by an evening-length Serenade in D (1767), which included a two-movement concertante for horn and trombone and an undated three-movement concertino for horn. It is most likely that this also originated as an intermezzo to a lost serenade. In the Adagio and Allegro from his Serenade in D, Michael Haydn offers the star soloists of the Salzburg court, hornists Joseph Leutgeb and trombonist Thomas Gschladt, ample opportunity to show off their lyrical and virtuosic abilities.

Leutgeb departed for Vienna during the 1770s in order to combine a free-lance career as a hornist with running a cheese shop. Gschladt also left the court of Salzburg, but Michael Haydn remained there for the rest of his life. He wrote only one more work for solo horn, a Romanze for horn and string quartet which shows many similarities with the central movement of Mozart’s horn concerto KV 447. Michael Haydn composed this version in 1795, four years after Mozart’s death. The horn part consists of a simplified version of Mozart’s original, while the accompaniment is completely new. Leutgeb probably paid his old friends in Salzburg a visit in 1795 and played some chamber music with them. He knew the Romance from Mozart’s horn concerto by heart, but not the accompaniment, of course; and Michael Haydn provided this curious bit of work as a substitute.

Herman Jeurissen