Friday, February 11, 8.00pm
Sunday, February 13, 3.00pm
Symphony Hall

HAYDN Symphony No. 104, “ London ”
MOZART Symphony No. 31, “ Paris ”
HAYDN Cello Concerto in C Major
MOZART Adagio in E Major, K. 261

Grant Llewellyn, conductor
Pieter Wispelwey, cello

CLICK HERE to listen to Music Director Grant Llewellyn discuss this program.

Three masterworks by the great composers of 18th-century Vienna, two of them symphonies written for their foreign admirers. Haydn wrote his “London” Symphony for a spectacular benefit concert in 1795, the climax of his English season. This masterful work was the last symphony he composed, and was an instant success: the first review declared that “for fullness, richness, and majesty in all its parts, [this symphony] thought by some of the best judges to surpass all his other compositions.”

Mozart was at the very beginning of his career when he composed his “Paris” Symphony—or rather, the beginning of his second career, and finding that the warm welcome given him as a child prodigy was not quite the same for a young adult. He composed his “Paris” Symphony for the opening of the Concerts spirituels in 1778, and he happily reported to his father that “the audience was quite carried away… I was so happy that as soon as the symphony was over, I went off to the Palais Royal, where I had a large ice-cream.”

This program is rounded out with Haydn’s jovial Cello Concerto in C major, a product of the early 1760’s when Haydn was working for the Esterhàzy family; it was probably first performed by Joseph Weigl, the court cellist.

For further information:

http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/haydnj.html
A good Haydn biography

http://www.mozartproject.org/index.html
An excellent Mozart site

http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/mozart.html
A short biography of Mozart, from the Grove Concise Dictionary of Music