Symphony no. 4 in D major

Johann Christian Bach's symphonies were written for the subscription concerts he ran in London with Carl Friedrich Abel from 1765, an enterprise that lasted some seventeen years and set the pattern for public concert series across Europe. They are short — three movements, no minuet — and scored for a small orchestra with oboes and horns, closer to the Italian opera sinfonia in which Bach had trained at Milan than to the Austrian symphony. The sets published as opp. 3, 6, 9 and 18 overlap, and different editors have numbered them differently.