Haydn: Divertimento for Piano and Double Concerto for Piano and Violin

Most composers can play at least one instrument tolerably well, and not a few of them play well enough to perform their own sonatas and concerti in public. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms are a few composers who played at least one instrument well enough to perform in public, and it is not surprising to find that they wrote some of their finest music for their preferred instruments. Not all composers were virtuosi, however, and contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary to play some instrument well in order to compose great music -- but it helps. Berlioz loved to play the guitar and flageolet but hardly considered himself a virtuoso on either instrument, and Wagner, though he played the piano, was more concerned with playing on people than on the eighty-eight keys. There were some composers in the past who performed only moderately well, or who could "get by" in performing their own music, but who had no illusions about their limitations as a soloist. Such a composer, for example, was Haydn. He was a tolerably good violinist and keyboard player, but when Tomasini was hired to play in the Esterhazy orchestra he took the opportunity to write several violin concerti for him as well as most of his string quartets. So far as his keyboard works were concerned, Haydn's earliest Divertimenti and Sonatas might well have been composed for himself (unlike many of Mozart's keyboard works which were written for students) and possibly for the enjoyment of his royal patron and patronness.