The big bang of classical orchestral music! Joseph Haydn's symphonic oeuvre forms the foundation on which the musical works of the Classical, Romantic and, ultimately, Modern periods stand: Many have failed to present this complex in its entirety. When the Heidelberg Symphony Orchestra proudly presented Volume 1 of Haydn's symphonies in 1999, the intention was to record and publish the complete orchestral oeuvre of this classic composer up to the 200th anniversary of his death in 2009. There were no recordings in the orchestra's archive and little experience with this composer: a bold plan that ultimately took 25 years to realize. And yet it seemed a thoroughly realistic vision for the still young but independent orchestra, which was not bound by any municipal repertoire. After all, it also promised solid basic funding for the decade for musicians who had previously lived from hand to mouth.

However, the orchestra, which had come together five years earlier, and its founder, director and spiritus rector Thomas Fey (born in 1960) could already draw on a wealth of shared experience. It all began in 1987 with the Schlierbacher Kammmerorchester (SKO), when the still-students began playing Handel, Bach and Mozart in the churches of the old Electoral Palatinate between Heidelberg, Mannheim and Schwetzingen. Thomas Fey, a pre-graduate conducting student at the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts, had enticed his fellow students with the offer: "Unfortunately, I can't pay you a lot of money, but you don't have to play vibrato!"

At first, it was enough to gain experience. It was also an aesthetic decision for the newcomers not to follow the still largely late-romantic interpretation of baroque and early classical music, but to orient themselves towards historical performance practice, with which Nikolaus Harnoncourt and like-minded outsiders in the music business had already achieved success: Harnoncourt's book "Musik als Klangrede" (1982), his recordings with the Concentus Musicus Wien and the now legendary Monteverdi and Mozart cycles in Zurich provided the handbook for a new view of pre- and early classical music.