Giovanni Antonini/Il Giardino Armonico
- Allegro assai
- Adagio in A major
- Menuet e Trio in F♯ major: Allegretto, 3
- Finale: Presto – Adagio (Presto in F♯ minor, Adagio in A major)
Sir Neville Marriner/Academy of St Martin in the Fields
- Allegro assai
- Adagio in A major
- Menuet e Trio in F♯ major: Allegretto, 3
- Finale: Presto – Adagio (Presto in F♯ minor, Adagio in A major)
Instrumentation:
- two oboes
- bassoon
- two horns (in A and E)
- strings (violins in two sections (four in the final Adagio), violas, cellos and double basses)
The tale of this symphony:
Nikolaus I, Prince Esterházy, was Haydn’s patron resident, and he was, together with all his musicians at his favorite summer palace at Eszterháza in rural Hungary. The stay there had been longer than expected. The musicians had been forced to leave their wives back at home in Eisenstadt, about a day’s journey away. So they appealed to Haydn, and this symphony is the result.
In the final adagio each musician stops playing, snuffs out the candle on his music stand, and leaves one by one. In the end there are just two muted violins left, played by Haydn himself and Luigi Tomasini, his concertmaster. Esterházy and his court returned to Eisenstadt the day following the performance.
The key:
The Farewell Symphony is the only 18th-century symphony ever written in the key of F# minor.
The symphony could not be performed without the purchase of two special half-step slides for use by the horn players that lengthened the horn’s tubing, permitting the instrument to be used to play in keys a semitone lower than usual. The horn of the time was the valveless natural horn, which needed to be adjusted with inserted crooks to play in different keys.