Symphony No. 44 in E minor is one of a number of Haydn’s mid-period works representing the Sturm und Drang (‘Storm and Stress’) style of melodramatic realism taken over from contemporary German literature and drama. The whole work is monotonal – each movement is in the same key, with contrast provided by excursions into the tonic major – and is pervaded by contrapuntal writing.

The second movement, unusually, is a minuet and is in strict double canon at the interval of a bar (‘Canone in Diapa...