Violin Concerto no. 1 in C major, Hob. VIIa:1

The C major violin concerto was written in the early 1760s for Luigi Tomasini, leader of the Esterházy orchestra and the player for whom most of Haydn's violin writing of that period was intended. Haydn listed it in his own catalogue; the autograph is lost and the work survives in copies. Three of the four concertos he is known to have written are extant. The idiom is still close to the baroque concerto — ritornello structure, a singing slow movement over muted strings — and predates by some years the symphonies that carried his name abroad.