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Hyperion Records

Sonata in F minor 'Un piccolo divertimento, Variations', Hob XVII:6
composer
1793; Vienna; written for Barbara von Ployer; first published in 1799 with a dedication to Baroness von Braun
Recordings
Cover of 'Handel & Haydn: Angela Hewitt plays Handel & Haydn' (CDA67736)
Handel & Haydn: Angela Hewitt plays Handel & Haydn
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CDA67736  Studio Master FLAC & ALAC downloads available
Cover of 'Haydn: Piano Sonatas, Vol. 2' (CDA67710)
Cover of 'Nikolai Demidenko live at Wigmore Hall' (CDD22024)
Cover of 'Paderewski – His final recordings' (APR5636)
Details
Track 1 on CDA67710 CD2 [12'45] 2CDs for the price of 1
Track 11 on CDA67736 [16'39]
Track 3 on CDD22024 CD1 [16'26] 2CDs Dyad (2 for the price of 1)
Track 1 on APR5636 [9'42]
Sonata in F minor 'Un piccolo divertimento, Variations', Hob XVII:6
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Haydn composed the Sonata ‘Un piccolo divertimento’ (Variations in F minor), in Vienna in 1793 for the talented pianist Barbara (‘Babette’) von Ployer, for whom Mozart had written the concertos K449 and K453. This profoundly felt music vies with the Andante of the ‘Drumroll’ Symphony as Haydn’s greatest set of alternating minor–major variations. After the stoic melancholy of the F minor opening, with its gently insistent dotted rhythms, the ornate F major theme exudes a kind of whimsical, abstracted playfulness. Haydn originally ended with the second F major variation and a few bars of coda. He subsequently appended a reprise of the F minor theme and a long, disturbingly chromatic coda that draws unsuspected force from the pervasive dotted rhythms before dissolving in a feverish swirl of arpeggios. After a measure of equilibrium is restored, the dotted rhythms toll deep in the bass, like a funeral knell. Haydn was the least confessional of composers. But it is not far-fetched to suggest, as several commentators have done, that the tragic intensity of the coda may have been prompted by the sudden death of Maria Anna von Genzinger, at the age of forty-two, on 26 January 1793.

from notes by Richard Wigmore © 2009

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