Haydn: Variations in F Minor (Andante with Variations), Hob. XVII:6

The Variations in F minor, Haydn's greatest set of variations for the keyboard, may well have been composed under the most tragic of circumstances. H. C. Robbins Landon feels that this piece was Haydn's reaction to the blow he sustained with the sudden passing of his dearest friend, Marianne von Genzinger, for whom he had written one of his finest sonatas, Number 59 in E flat, a few months earlier. A funeral March and its trio are twice varied in a work solemn and poignant. The work concludes with an extended and wrenching coda whose remarkable modulations anticipate the 19th century in their emotional intensity.