Sheet music introduction: Haydn’s Largo cantabile from Symphony No 93

Jeremy Nicholas
Monday, March 24, 2025

Jeremy Nicholas introduces a piano transcription of Haydn’s Largo cantabile from Symphony No 93 by Julius Schulhoff. The sheet music for the work appears in our Spring 2025 issue

Tully Potter Collection

Spina, the Viennese music publishers founded in 1824 by Anton Spina (1790-1857) and Anton Diabelli, issued a volume of Six transcriptions d’après les oeuvres de Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart by Julius Schulho: two Mozart quartet movements, two Beethoven symphony movements, a Haydn minuet and this Largo ‘de la Symphonie en re’. The collection was dedicated ‘À Madame Betty Schott née de Braunrasch!’ (note the exclamation mark), who was the wife of the publisher Franz Philipp Schott. Frau Schott, not surprisingly given her station, was the recipient of many dedications from the likes of Raff, Leybach, Ferdinand Hiller and, most famously, Wagner, whose final piano work bears her name.

Julius Schulhoff (sometimes given as Jules) was born in Prague in 1825 and is now entirely forgotten. The First edition of Grove, though, enthusiastically commends him as ‘dear to player and dancer for his Galop di bravura, Impromptu Polka, and many more brilliant and clever PF pieces’. He made his debut at 14 before moving in 1842 to Paris, where ‘a fortunate interview with Chopin gave him his opportunity’ – meaning that he appeared in concerts under Chopin’s patronage (Schulhoff’s Allegro brillant, Op 1, is dedicated to the Pole). His success in that ‘hotbed of piano virtuosity’ set him up as a touring virtuoso through France, Austria, England, Spain ‘and even Russia and the Crimea (1853)’ before he returned to Paris. Here he devoted himself entirely to teaching and composition, eventually moving to Dresden in 1870 and then to Berlin in 1897. He died there the following year aged 72. While Julius has disappeared from view, the music of his great grand-nephew Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942) has been widely admired and much recorded.

Those who purchased Schulhoff’s transcription of the Largo from Haydn’s Symphony in D major might have wondered upon which of the 22 symphonies in that key Schulhoff had alighted. It is in fact the second movement of Symphony No 93 in D major, Hob I:93, one of the 12 ‘London’ Symphonies, completed in 1791, and a work which, to Sir Donald Tovey, was ‘arguably the greatest of Haydn’s instrumental works’. Berlioz wrote a charming allegory of it: ‘It goes and comes, never brusquely, noiselessly, in morning négligé, clean and comfortable; it hums a tune and now and then cracks its little joke …’ The Largo cantabile movement has a rondo-like structure, its graceful theme momentarily recalling the finale of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. It is reinforced with the help of the bassoons before a more agitated central section in triplets.

Schulhoff was not the only one of his era to make a solo piano transcription of this movement. Others include August Horn (1825-93), in a volume of all 12 ‘London’ Symphonies for Peters, and Robert Wittman (1804-c1891), who transcribed this single symphony for the same publisher. Both find almost identical solutions to the task. One might call them bog-standard in-house arrangements. Schulhoff, though not entirely dissimilar, is pianistically more imaginative, lending extra weight and variation to the textures where needed, while remaining faithful to Haydn’s notation.

Sadly missing from all three piano versions is the moment towards the end when, as the music comes almost to a halt, the bassoon interrupts with an unexpected low C fortissimo ‘fart’ – a moment not dissimilar from that in the second movement of the Surprise Symphony. Perhaps the pianist must supply his own vocal raspberry.

The sheet music for Julius Schulhoff's arrangement of Haydn’s Largo cantabile from Symphony No 93 appears in the Spring 2025 issue of International Piano. Subscribe today.

International Piano Print

  • New print issues
  • New online articles
  • Unlimited website access

From £26 per year

Subscribe

International Piano Digital

  • New digital issues
  • New online articles
  • Digital magazine archive
  • Unlimited website access

From £26 per year

Subscribe

                      

If you are an existing subscriber to Gramophone, Opera Now or Choir & Organ and would like to upgrade, please contact us here or call +44 (0)1722 716997.