Sinfonia in F 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 F minor Symphony (Ben 138) was composed in 1786 and published in Paris by Imbault. The work as a whole draws its inspiration from Haydn’s magnificent series of minor key symphonies written during the late 1760s and early 1770s . While one could perhaps accuse Pleyel of adopting a few too many of Haydn’s most characteristic fingerprints in the first movement, it would be churlish to dismiss the symphony as entirely derivative. Impressive though the outer movements are – and once again Pleyel also succeeds in writing a lovely Minuet and Trio – the most remarkable movement is the central Andante grazioso with its muted strings and gently rocking accompaniment figure in the second violins.