CDLXXXIV. HAYDN, Franz Joseph: String Quartet #61 in D Minor, Op. 76, No. 2

CDLXXXIV. HAYDN, Franz Joseph (1732-1809)

String Quartet #61 in D Minor, Op. 76, No. 2 (1797-98)
1. Allegro
2. Andante o più tosto allegretto
3. Menuetto. Allegro ma non-troppo
4. Vivace assai
Zagreb Quartet
(21:13)

The six Opus 76 quartets were Haydn's final compositions for the form. They are delightfully Haydn-esque, but also contain elements pointing the way forward to the early Beethoven's.

Nicknamed "The Fifth" for obvious reasons:

 

Charles Burney -- seemingly damning Haydn with faint praise of the set -- wrote:

"They are full of invention, fire, good taste, and new effects, and seem the production, not of a sublime genius who has written so much and so well already, but of one of the highly-cultivated talents, who had expended none of his fire before."

Haydn was 65, and had already expended plenty of fire!

The second theme has barely been introduced (Bar 13, above), when Haydn returns to the fifths; introduces a brave syncopated riff, and modulates to the mediant F Minor:

The development features more fifths, starting in the cello, moving to the violins and cadencing on the supermediant B-Flat Major:

Syncopated fifths:

Second movement

A theme-and-variations. Haydn introduces the 32nd-note pulse immediately:

and gives it over completely to a bravura first violin:

 

Third movement

The high and low strings engage in a 3-beat canon; it becomes particularly wonderful when the turns are introduced:

 

It is the Trio which provides an unexpected and slightly ghostly sound:

Fourth movement

A sprightly rondo in the Major: