Symphony No. 45 in F‑Sharp Minor

Symphony No. 45 is one of the best-known of Haydn’s symphonies, largely due to the famous story of its composition. Haydn’s patron, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, moved to his summer palace as usual in 1772, but decreed that no families of the musicians were to visit. As autumn arrived, it became clear that the Prince had no immediate plans to return to his winter residence near Vienna, where the families lived. Haydn tactfully built in a musical reminder to him at the end of the symphony, breaking off from what appeared to be the finale (“Presto”), and beginning a new slow movement (“Adagio”) which goes through a series of stately modulations as, one by one, all the instruments leave—apart from two solo violins. The strategy worked, but the story has overshadowed Haydn’s extraordinarily emotional and highly charged music. Indeed, the Farewell—as the Symphony has become known—inhabits the edgy world of F-sharp minor—the only 18th-century symphony in this remote key.