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To celebrate Florilegium’s 30th anniversary this year, the group is presenting two concerts of favourite chamber programmes by Haydn and Bach. Tonight's programme offers scaled-down versions of three of Haydn’s London Symphonies as arranged by the violinist, quartet leader, conductor and composer Johann Peter Salomon. We owe the existence of these 12 London symphonies to Salomon who persuaded Europe’s most famous composer to come to London to conduct the new symphonies he had commissioned from Haydn. Given the immense success of Haydn’s symphonies, and the limited seating capacity of such venues as the Hanover Square Rooms, it is hardly surprising that there was much demand for chamber versions of the new pieces that could be played by amateurs in their own drawing room. The choice of instrumentation is ingenious and unprecedented: the use of a string quartet enabled Salomon to reproduce Haydn’s string writing in full, as well as borrowing instruments for other roles and by adding a flute to the ensemble, Salomon uses Haydn’s most widely featured wind instrument.