Haydn launches his last complete opus of string quartets with a spectacular work for its time. It's impressive, first of all, because Haydn dares to mock himself and his listeners' expectations in the opening bars. Here is the eagerly awaited latest work by the man recognized as Europe's greatest living composer, following its three sharp opening chords not with some grand statement but with a little whistling tune for the cello, quickly picked up by the viola. To intensify the joke, Haydn takes this unpretentious, home-made street song and leads it through two-part and polyphonic counterpoint and myriad variants. That's just the beginning of this Allegro con spirito movement, which continues with a second subject that's little more than an excited string of eighth notes played by the first violin, which quickly draws the other instruments into the chatter. The development section darkens slightly, as if Haydn has suddenly remembered that a composer of his stature should be writing serious sonata movements. As usual with Haydn, though, the development is over almost as soon as it's begun, and the movement bubbles through a recapitulation that thickens the whistling tune's original texture a bit but otherwise proceeds without incident.

The unexpectedly noble Adagio sostenuto begins with a hushed hymn tune. This gradually becomes clotted with shorter note values while the rhythm begins to pulsate, but it eases off into a brief dialog between the first violin and cello. Haydn essentially repeats all this music a couple of times, the pulsing rhythm twice hammering its way to the foreground before being subdued by the hymn.

The Minuet pops out a theme of staccato triplets that is occasionally disrupted by very loud bursts of eighth notes. The central trio section is a swirling little dance for the first violin accompanied merely by pizzicato notes on the first beat of each measure, but the opening section returns for one last flurry.

Somber G minor drenches the urgent beginning of the final Allegro ma non troppo movement, which is based on a gruff theme rounded off with nasty little trills. Before long the first violin and then the cello are sent racing madly up and down the scale, with only brief pauses for the four instruments to mull over what a sour turn the music has taken. This turns out to be another sonata-allegro movement, with most of the development derived from the rapid, opening six- note gesture. Surprisingly, the recapitulation returns everything to the sunnier G major, and at the very end the first violin breaks away with a cheerful little street song derived from the ominous music that began the movement, while the other three instruments pluck away below. This is perhaps Haydn's way of warning us that nothing we've heard during the past twenty minutes, except for the slow movement, should be taken very seriously.



© All Music Guide