Haydn: 4-8 June

[rauschwerk]

JS, yes that makes sense - I suppose what I don't really understand is why WAM's well known keyboard virtuosity didn't generate solo music of the range, quality and quantity of (the less virtuoso) Haydn's, or indeed of his own concertos.

Had Haydn died at 35 he would have left only 14 keyboard sonatas and a couple of other pieces, none of them anywhere as momentous as Mozart's finest sonatas.

Mozart wrote concertos mostly for himself to play at concerts at which he could dazzle his public. Sonatas were not in those days performed in public - he wrote them to publish and sell to the amateur market and was more than once asked to produce 'easy' pieces which would sell readily. The fact that he was constitutionally incapable of doing this (see the notoriously tricky K576/i) does not affect the general case. That said, I'm very fond of a number of the sonatas and think that in general they have had a bad press, perhaps aided by indifferent performances.

[Roehre]

...Sonatas were not in those days performed in public - he wrote them to publish and sell to the amateur market and was more than once asked to produce 'easy' pieces which would sell readily. The fact that he was constitutionally incapable of doing this ... does not affect the general case. ....

The same applies to piano trios and piano quartets. From the latter we've got only two works, though 3 were commissioned.
That commission was cancelled after the publisher received the quartets KV478 and 493, as these were considered too difficult to play for an amateur as well as musically too difficult to understand.

[Rolmill]

Thanks for the various comments regarding the differing contexts within which Haydn and Mozart composed their piano works - they are all helpful and interesting. In particular, I take the point that widening the scope to cover all solo piano works (not just sonatas) evens the balance somewhat (though it brings Haydn's wonderful F minor variations into the equation). I also agree that too many "pretty" performances of Mozart's sonatas (especially by amateurs such as myself!) have not helped his cause. Despite all, I still can't find it in myself to accept the original contention that Mozart's piano sonatas/music are preferable to Haydn's - perhaps the honours are more even than I stated earlier, though . It's not a competion, after all...