NO.23 __LA CHASSE

Il Giardino Armonico
Dmitry Smirnov, violin
Giovanni Antonini, conductor
Thomas Meyer, writer
Stuart Franklin, photographer
 

Joseph Haydn: Symphonies No.72, No.41 and No. 73 «La Chasse»
Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto for violin, strings and continuo in B flat Major «La Caccia» op.8 No. 10 

Concerts:
10 October 2025, Vienna Musikverein
11 October 2025, Basel Don Bosco (Tickets)

Project no.23 in the Haydn2032 series is related in several respects to Project no.13, named ‘Hornsignal’ and performed in November 2020. First of all, it features Symphony no.72, the first of a total of three D major symphonies from the years 1763-65, for the composition of which Haydn was in the fortunate position of being able to call on a flute player and four horn players, of whom he made intensive use of in all four movements of this work wantonly misdated by Eusebius Mandyczewski’s catalogue. (The other two are no.13, also from 1763, and no.31 ‘Mit dem Hornsignal’ from 1765.) Furthermore, it is joined here by Symphony no.41 in C major, which can be described as a sister work to no.48, nicknamed ‘Maria Theresia’, written a year earlier. The close relationship between the two stems not only from their shared key of C major, but above all from the horn parts, notated in ‘high C’ or ‘C alto’, which are so challenging for the players that, for example, the first of the two horns in the Trio of Hob. I:41’s Menuet has to ‘toil’ all the way up to a''.

The name of this project was ultimately inspired by the last work in the programme, and more specifically its Presto finale. The piece in question is Symphony no.73 ‘La Chasse’ (probably the root cause of Mandyczewski’s confusion), whose fourth movement was originally written as the Overture to the opera La fedeltà premiata (Fidelity rewarded), first performed in 1781. One of the movement’s themes – first heard after a general pause on a chord of the dominant – has been identified as a traditional hunting signal called ‘l’ancienne vue’, which was sounded at the first sight of a stag. (In the opera, it is a symbolic representation of the goddess Diana, who ultimately intervenes as dea ex machina to lift a curse she herself had imposed on the Campanian coastal town of Cuma (Latin: Cumae), situated near the island of Ischia.)

There is also a violin concerto by Antonio Vivaldi called ‘The Hunt’ (‘La Caccia’), which appeared alongside the famous Four Seasons in the collection Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione . . . Opera Ottava published by Michel-Charles Le Cène in Amsterdam in 1725. In Haydn 2032 no.23, the solo part in this work is assigned to Dmitry Smirnov, who has already given a glittering performance of Haydn’s Violin Concerto no.1 in our project no.17, ‘Per il Luigi’.