Cello Concerto no. 1 in C major, Hob. VIIb:1

Haydn composed the C major cello concerto between 1761 and 1765 for Joseph Franz Weigl, a virtuoso he had brought into the Esterházy chapel and to whose son he stood godfather. He entered the work in his own thematic catalogue, writing out the opening of the first movement, but no record of a performance survives. For close to two centuries it was counted lost, until the musicologist Oldřich Pulkert found a copy of the score in the Radenín castle archive held at the National Museum in Prague; the modern premiere followed at the Prague Spring festival in May 1962.