Allegro moderato
Scherzo: Allegro
Largo
Presto

At least one of the Op. 33 Quartets was first performed in the Viennese home of the Grand Duke Paul of Russia, the his wife, the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna, on Christmas Day 1781 and it is to the Grand Duke that they were subsequently dedicated when Artaria published them the following year (by which time Haydn – a seasoned operator by this time – had also sold the same quartets to publishers in the Netherlands and Germany. Months before any printed editions appeared, Haydn had offered patrons and potential supporters the chance to buy manuscript copies of his new quartets, describing them as being written ‘in a completely new and special way, for I haven’t composed any for ten years’. The first movement of Op. 33 No. 2 demonstrates this ‘new and special way’ at its most subtle: there is an ease of musical conversation between the four instruments that shows absolute mastery of the form while at the same time Haydn uses just one principal theme and some variants of it to develop a sophisticated musical argument. The Scherzo takes the form of an Austrian peasant dance, a ‘Schuhplattler’ with its characteristic stamping rhythms and a trio section in which Haydn marks slides between the notes, presumably to maintain a sense of rustic merry-making. The slow movement is altogether more serious, opening with the viola and cello playing the main theme before the violins take it over, and in this Largo Haydn aims for a more sparing texture than in other slow movements. It is the fourth movement that is the source of the work’s nickname, ‘the Joke’. A bright and brilliant tarantella, Haydn’s joke lies in trying to trick listeners – more than once – into thinking the piece has finished when it hasn’t. It’s a witty and clever series of musical booby-traps that can easily lure the unwary.

Nigel Simeone