J. Haydn: Symphony No. 46 in B major

1. how you come across to it:
Listening to this symphony is part of an ongoing project of systematically surveying Haydn's oeuvre.

2. why this piece?
Haydn's complete symphonies is too important to be omitted in such a listening project.

3. (and...)
This is a very gallant work composed during his Storm-and-Stress period. The B-minor second movement sounds like Barbarina singing in the beginning of Figaro's Act IV (i.e., melancholy over trivia). In the finale, before the theme's final statement, the middle of the minuet, played by solo strings, all of a sudden reappears. The portion of the minuet cited even happens to resemble the finale's theme. Has Beethoven learned from Haydn in his Fifth?