Hyperion Records

No 95 is the only ‘London’ symphony in the minor, and the only one without a slow introduction. For late-eighteenth-century listeners the minor mode implied a gravitas that made a solemn preamble superfluous. No 95’s stark unison ‘motto’ recalls Haydn’s previous C minor Symphony, No 78 of 1782, one of a trio of works written for an aborted London visit. As in the earlier work, the motto invites strenuous contrapuntal treatment. In No 95, though, Haydn is careful to cajole as well as challenge his audience, contrasting C minor severity with an ear-tickling second theme, charmingly adorned in the C major recapitulation with a violin solo for Salomon.

After a lilting theme-and-variations Andante in E flat that includes an expressive cello solo and a free minore episode, the minuet again juxtaposes C minor and major. The main section is by turns edgy and aggressive, while the untroubled C major trio features another, more extended, solo for cello. With the many solo passages, here and elsewhere in the first six London symphonies, Haydn endeared himself both to his audience and his orchestral principals. The sonata-rondo finale begins with a broad, serene C major melody, which Haydn then proceeds to work in an intricate display of counterpoint. With its polyphonic virtuosity and pealing C major splendour (darkened fleetingly by a stormy C minor outburst), the movement has provoked inevitable comparisons with Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony. Haydn may even have consciously modelled his far terser finale on Mozart’s.

from notes by Richard Wigmore © 2009