Description

The titles of the movements remind of baroque concertos – although Stravinsky states that „Vivaldi is greatly overrated – a dull fellow who could compose the same form over and so many times over“. Nevertheless, this reservation did not hold when it came to Bach whom Stravinsky greatly admired and also not to Haydn. Of all musicians of his age Haydn was the most aware, I think, that to be perfectly symmetrical is to be perfectly dead.

Igor Stravinsky in Craft, Conversations 1958