Some twenty years separate the origin of the Concerto in D major from its predecessor, the Cello Concerto in C major, Hob.VIIb:1. During Haydn's earlier years with the Esterházys there was only one cellist in the orchestra and so there is no doubt that the C major Concerto was intended for Joseph Franz Weigl.Weigl's son, the later well-known Vienna Opera Director and Deputy Court Kapellmeister Joseph Weigl, was baptized as a godson of Haydn in 1766, but the concerto cannot be counted as originating in this connection, since Haydn wrote the beginning of the principal theme of the first movement in his draft catalogue of 1765. Believed lost, the work was first rediscovered in 1961. In the former possession of Radenin Castle in Bohemia a score was found which, after investigation of the sources, provided reliable evidence, serving from then on as a primary source. Within a few years the concerto was played throughout the world and is now regarded as at the core of solo cello repertoire.

In various respects the concerto holds a special position. The outer movements correspond in some way to the organ and violin concertos of the same period, monothematic and following the example of Tartini and Vivaldi, but there appears in the cello concerto, interestingly also in its slow movement, a thematic dualism with the disparate elements to which we are now accustomed in a sonata-form movement, although this idea was first coined decades after in the heyday of Viennese classicism. More important than the term itself is the philosophical dimension of this duality, which can properly be understood as the symbol of enlightened antithetical thinking. We see the 'father' of this musical thinking, and even, thereby, of Viennese classicism, here in a period of upheaval, evidence of the great scope Haydn enjoyed as a court musician.

The differentiation of thematic working corresponds to a development of the orchestral writing. For the first time in a solo concerto Haydn uses two oboes and two horns and produces, through the occasional separation of oboe and first violin, that division between strings and wind instruments customary in his early symphonies. A further trick deserves mention, the 'secret entry' of the solo instrument in the second and third movements. This was a favourite device of Boccherini - Haydn could have encountered his Italian colleague and his cello concertos in 1764 in Vienna - and Mozart later developed this technique to perfection.

There are only conjectures as to the possible reasons for the composition of Haydn's cello concertos. Leopold Nowak (1954) thought that the Concerto in D major could have been written for the wedding celebrations of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy and Princess Maria Josepha Hermengildis Liechtenstein, but there is no existing proof of this. Yet this theory has something to be said for it, as the two concertos are closely connected with Prince Nikolaus. In the first movement of the Concerto in C major a motif is repeated, quoted from a congratulatory cantata (Hob.XXIVa:2), which was written on the occasion of the Prince's name-day on 6^th December 1763. Perhaps Haydn intended, in the two cello concertos, to pay special tribute to his patron. This would have been a reason for him to demonstrate his whole knowledge of composition.