Imagine a time before recorded music. No Spotify, no CDs. No cassettes or LPs. No radio. How could composers get their works heard more broadly? How could people listen to, say, the symphonies of Beethoven or the grand serenades of Mozart without leaving home? The Australian Haydn Orchestra’s second concert for 2021 explored some of the arrangements created to allow amateur musicians to recreate large-scale works in a domestic setting.


Melissa Farrow, Skye McIntosh and Matthew Greco, Australian Haydn Ensemble. Photograph © Oliver Miller

Mozart’s ‘Haffner’ Serenade, for instance, a rangy and sometimes raucous series of dances and marches, was written as incidental music for the wedding of his patron’s daughter, Elizabeth Haffner, in 1778. The original version features generous helpings of drums and trumpets, perfect for creating a sense of occasion and cutting through a lively party hubbub. The version played here was an arrangement by 18th-century musician and architect Girolamo Masi intended for chamber performance. Actually, it was an arrangement of an arrangement: during her research, AHE Artistic Director Skye McIntosh discovered that Masi had interpolated new material, either by himself or someone else, but certainly not Mozart, into the final movement. McIntosh, in collaboration with...