Symphony no. 104 "London" in D major, Hob. I:104

The last of the twelve symphonies Haydn wrote for London was finished in 1795, during the second of the two visits arranged by the impresario Johann Peter Salomon. He was in his sixties, had ninety-two symphonies behind him, and was meeting a paying public and a new kind of concert life for the first time. Number 104 closes the London set and his symphonic output altogether. It opens with a slow introduction in the minor, its dotted unisons suggesting a funeral march, before the movement's principal theme — light, dance-like — takes over the argument.