Martines – Piano Concerto in A major (c.1800)

Marianna Martines was a Classical composer, pianist and singer who was based in Vienna, and friend of Mozart and Haydn.

The Martines family lives in the same building in Vienna as the dowager princess of the Esterházy family (Haydn’s patrons), the Italian composer and singer Nicola Porpora, and up in the attic a young Joseph Haydn!

Marianna started keyboard lessons with Haydn from the age of seven, and when she was ten started singing lessons with Porpora – Haydn was his assistant, and would accompany Marianna’s singing lessons from the harpsichord. She then began composition lessons with Johann Hasse and Giuseppe Bonno. She had an excellent education, speaking in Italian, German, French and English.

She was often asked to sing before Empress Maria Theresa and would seem from contemporary accounts to have had a very pleasing and agile voice. She and her sister in the 1780s onwards held evening concerts to which Haydn and Mozart would come to, and Mozart composed his four-hand piano sonatas for Marianna and him to perform.

Amongst her surviving works are two oratorios, four mass settings, six motets, and a collection of cantatas. There are also three piano sonatas, three piano concerti (including today’s choice), and a symphony.