Sinfonia in C minor

Ignaz Pleyel (1757-1831) was at one time the most famous composer in the world. The popularity of his music eclipsed that of even his teacher Haydn and publishers vied to bring out his latest works as soon as they were finished. Some 2000 separate prints of Pleyel works had appeared by 1800 and his fame extended to every corner of Europe as well as North America. Pleyel’s career as a composers spanned less than thirty years with the majority of his works composed in the 1780s. He founded a successful publishing house in Paris in the mid-1790s and later began manufacturing keyboard instruments. With increasing demands on his time from his business concerns Pleyel’s productivity as a composer dropped sharply and he ceased composing around 1805. Pleyel was a prolific and successful composer in many genres and unsurprisingly, given his close relationship with Haydn, he was an extremely accomplished composer of symphonies. The earliest of them is the remarkable Symphony in C minor (Ben 121), in reality, a C major symphony with an imposing introduction in the minor. Written in 1778 when the composer was 21 it is a work of precocious genius. Much of its intensity and technical assurance can be attributed to Haydn’s influence, but a distinctive and original voice emerges nonetheless, particularly in the fine opening Adagio and in the thrilling Finale. The outer movements are powerful and energetic and like Haydn, Pleyel proves adept at maintaining, and, on a more subtle organizational level, imposing a strong degree of musical unity, through clever manipulation of thematic cells.