During his travels, Mozart often needed new pieces: in Mannheim, for example, he composed the Sonata in C major for the thirteen-year-old Rosa Cannabich, and later, in Linz, the Sonata in B flat, presumably as a concert piece for himself. These two brilliant sonatas are plaved here on an original fortepiano of the late eighteenth century, similar to those by Stein that Mozart loved so much, and accompanied by the three wonderful rondos for piano of 1786/87. ‘Clarity, tranquillity, grace: the hallmark of the works of art of Antiquity is also that of the Mozartian school’, wrote Schumann.

On 1 May 1761, at the age of twenty-nine, Joseph Haydn officially became Vice-Capel-Meister to Prince Paul II Anton Esterházy, after having been Director of Music (Musikdirektor) to Count Karl Joseph von Morzin, who had squandered his fortune and had to disband his orchestra. Much has been made of the contract he signed that day. However, despite its demanding terms, it is not true that Haydn was reduced to the level of a servant, far from it, and his salary of 400 Gulden a year was double what he received from Count Morzin. But one of its restrictive clauses did forbid him to communicate to anyone new compositions requested by the prince, and to compose for anyone else without the monarch’s “gracious permission”.