Life and Works: Haydn

Haydn’s creative imagination was stimulated by eminent Italian composers such as Porpora and Scarlatti and by his contemporary C.P.E. Bach, whose piano sonatas Haydn had performed. Through Georg Wagenseil, an important figure in Viennese music for the piano, he also absorbed a new sense of musical form. Together, these influences generated Haydn’s own individual language, as shown in the Sonata in C major with its elegance and wit. The Andante con variazioni in F minor shows further refinement and development in the composer’s command of variation form. Alexandra Ivanova performs on fortepianos from Haydn’s era.

Classical Music

Following Mahler's Ninth and Bruckner's Fifth, this live recording of Joseph Haydn's "The Creation" is already the third CD recording to feature master conductor Bernard Haitink at the helm of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, an orchestra he’s been guest conducting for over 50 years. The BRSO and its Choir joined forces for this recording, together with a team of renowned soloists - soprano Camilla Tilling, tenor Mark Padmore and bass-baritone Hanno Müller-Brachmann. This is the first and only currently available recording of "The Creation" featuring Bernard Haitink.

The Maxwell Quartet’s recording debut stands out for its innovative approach: each of Haydn’s Op. 71 quartets is paired with a tune, or set of traditional tunes, from the ensemble’s homeland of Scotland. This prize-winning quartet believes classical music has a strong connection to its folk music heritage and aims to marry the two together with this unique and meaningful programme. Interspersing each of the three Op. 71 quartets, are the Maxwells’ own arrangements of traditional Scottish music designed to both celebrate and acknowledge the folk music heritage which influenced both performer and composer centuries apart. Surprisingly there are relatively few recent recordings of the Op. 71 quartets, yet they contain some of Haydn’s most virtuosic writing for string quartet. Each quartet has its own unique quality: No. 1 is overwhelmingly joyful, No. 2 is lyrical and romantic and No. 3 is perhaps the most compositionally innovative of the set. Hailed as superb storytellers and great communicators, the Maxwell Quartet’s inventive debut will add to its growing reputation as one of the UK’s most exciting strings quartets.

Haydn's wonderful Stabat Mater is far less well known than those of Pergolesi and other composers; this recording made in Paris in 1978 was a pioneering version using reconstructed scores and revised by renowned musicologist and scholar H C Robbins Landon. Also included is the even rarer LIBERA ME, only discovered in the mid 20th century. The soloists are: ANNA MARIA BONDI (soprano), CLAUDIA EDER (mezzo), AXEL REICHARDT (tenor) and KERT KRATTINGER (bass) with the Choral Philippe Caillard. As bonus tracks, we include classic 1964 recordings of the 44th Symphony (Trauersinfonie) and the rare Double Concerto for Violin and Harpsichord, which features violinist Jacques Francis Manzone and harpsichordist Francoise Petit.

The esteemed American pianist Anne-Marie McDermott has played concertos, recitals and chamber music in hundreds of cities in the United States, Europe and Asia. Recent collaborations include recitals with her violin partner, Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg, chamber music with the piano quartet, Opus One, and concertos with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Dallas Symphony Orchestra in Vail, Colorado. Ms. McDermott's upcoming recordings for Bridge include a series of Mozart concertos, and the new Poul Ruders Piano Concerto No. 3, "Paganini Variations", recorded with the Odense Symphony Orchestra. On the present release, McDermott has once again chosen the sonatas of Haydn, making this her second volume of the composer’s work for Bridge Records. “We have waited a long time for an American pianist of this stature.” (Gramophone) “She’s one of the great American pianists of her generation.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

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All the recordings presented here were made ‘off-air’ using a state-of-the-art tape machine. Subsequently they were archived on disc acetates – the tapes themselves being erased and reused. The performance of Symphony 103, conducted by Harry Newstone, is the only one for which the original tape survives. The discs were stored upright in a single location, they had probably never been moved or played, and so have survived more than 60 years in remarkably good condition. The original documentation, by both cataloguing and typed center labels on each disc gives full details of the performers and transmission dates. Richard Itter was generous in not trying to fit too much music on each side – but rather less kind when it came to the abrupt fades on last notes and applause. Here is a rich smorgasbord of Haydn from a wide range of conductors: some reached back into the 19th century, some were the travelling maestros of their time, and some formed British Orchestras that enriched the diet of our nation’s musical life.

Trio Jean Paul is one of the world's best-known trios, regularly touring around the globe. *Trio Jean Paul/Eckardt Heiligers: piano/Ulf Schneider: violin/Martin L�hr: cello.

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In the 1980s, as the movement for historically informed performance was booming, there was a sudden flurry of attempts by period-instrument ensembles to record all of Haydn’s 106 symphonies. It was perhaps inevitable that none of them would reach the summit of this musical Everest – most made it about halfway up to this ambitious and costly undertaking.

One of these Haydn series that created a stir at the time was directed by the London-based violinist-conductor Derek Solomons. Between 1980 and 1986, he recorded 49 symphonies with his hand-picked ensemble, L’Estro Armonico. Sony Classical is now pleased to present all of these pioneering Haydn performances for the first time on CD. Included in this new collected edition of 18 newly mastered discs are several recordings never before issued in any medium.

In an interview for Gramophone, Solomons stated: “There seemed no better composer to look at than Joseph Haydn to make our recording début on original instruments – and also the début of these symphonies in this kind of performance. I’d discovered that there was a group of 14 symphonies written for Count Morzin before Haydn started working for Count Esterhazy.”

On questions such as the historically correct size of the ensemble, Solomons’s guide (and the annotator of all his Haydn symphony releases) was H.C. Robbins Landon, the doyen of Haydn scholars. Landon had determined from contemporary sources that Haydn’s “Morzin” orchestra initially comprised only three first and three second violins, one each of viola, cello and bass, with a pair of oboes, a pair of horns and a bassoon.

After recording the early “Morzin” group, Solomons turned to the ground-breaking “Sturm und Drang” symphonies that Haydn composed in the years following his move – in around 1760 – from Count Morzin’s Vienna establishment to the wealthy, influential, music-loving Hungarian court of Count Esterházy. In 1982, L’Estro Armonico began with the six earliest of this astonishing body of works. They were released by CBS, which, having taken over the project from Saga, went on to record the ensemble’s Haydn until 1986 – long enough to complete the remaining symphonies from the “Sturm und Drang” period as well as a few earlier and later ones also written for Esterházy.

Although Derek Solomons’s vision of performing all the symphonies with L’Estro Armonico would, sadly, never materialize, there was almost unanimous enthusiasm for the works that were ultimately recorded and released: “It would be hard to imagine performances of more freshness and conviction … One is impressed by the light-textured quality of the playing, its neatness and precision … The string section is small … which enables the winds – especially the splendid high horns – to be heard with absolute clarity” (Gramophone); “I find it very difficult to go back to conventional Haydn, which seems so mannered and dull in comparison” (Classical Music); “The exhilaration I feel as I rediscover Haydn’s inventiveness, underlines the fact that I will never be able to listen again to Haydn being flattened by a steamroller of a large symphony orchestra” (Music & Video Week). As recently as 2012, a BBC Music Magazine critic called these “among the most brilliant Haydn performances I’ve heard.”

HAYDN Piano Sonatas: in D, Hob 37; in e, Hob 34; in b, Hob 32; in Eb, Hob 52; Andante with Variations, Hob 6 • Alexander Kobrin (pn) • QUARTZ 28888 (72: 44)


This is an often delightful release, pleasingly and realistically recorded. Liner notes are short, but to the point and informative. The four sonatas are carefully chosen, and the decision to place the famous F-Minor Variations at the close is a fine one. The actual playing order of the sonatas is D Major; E Minor; B Minor; Eb-Major.


The D-Major Sonata (published 1780) introduces the listener to Kobrin’s fine articulation; his reading of the first movement is sprightly and engaging. Kobrin has no objections to playing against the basic tempo at times, each time returning exactly to his tempo primo. Affection is the keyword here, something which also shines through the central Largo e sostenuto , where the music finds surprisingly dark regions. Kobrin is daringly slow, perhaps to emphasize contrast with the finale (which, in order to confirm this, starts almost too innocently).


The E Minor (1781/82) and the B Minor (1776) provide a central panel of minor mode fodder. The B Minor is the more enigmatic of the two, and is where Kobrin is most successful, hitting the heart of Haydn’s created world dead center, although perhaps he misses the humor of the finale by a fraction. Kobrin’s finger fluency in the finale of the B Minor is remarkable.


The grand Eb-Sonata is the one most people know, I suspect. It has been recorded by a roster of great pianists. Of the extensive list on ArkivMusic, it is Brendel’s late Philips one that takes the honors. But the list omits the admittedly hard to find and probably deleted twofer on Ivory Classics by Nadia Reisenberg, raved about by my colleague Bernard Jacobson in Fanfare 22:3. Reisenberg and Kobrin share an expressive esthetic that has no problems referring to romantic models, but it is Reisenberg that is the most convincing. She also has more tonal variety and, in the final analysis, a closer connection with Haydn. Her accents, for example, have bite but do not thump at you in the way Kobrin’s can; and perhaps Kobrin is overly sober in the first movement. While Reisenberg offers perfectly shaded turns to minor key areas, Kobrin offers instead a notably well-thought through reading which, in comparison, lacks distinction. Yet in the central Adagio he excels. His achievement here is that he does not try to make this into a Beethovenian statement, although it is easy to hear links to the various slow movements of Beethoven’s sonatas of Opp. 2 and 10. Kobrin’s finale is not quite up to par. Phrase endings sound a bit careful, and articulation is good but not perfect.


Finally, the great set of Variations in F Minor. Brendel again springs to mind in connection with this piece; perhaps also Ingrid Haebler (Philips). This piece, in fact, proves to be the climax proper of Kobrin’s Haydn recital. Starting from a properly quiet opening, it becomes clear that Kobrin sees this piece as attempting to set out a whole expressive sphere in which the delicacy can be deliberately undermined. The close dissolves brilliantly into nothingness. Well worth hearing.


FANFARE: Colin Clarke

Classical Music

"The quintessence {of his greatness} seems to me to be in the exceptionally light handling of the rhythm, an art in which no one else is his equal, and to lie in what the English refer to as humor, a word which does not really have an exact German equivalent. This latter characteristic explains his propensity for comic twists and the greater achievement of explaining away such features as serious …" (Albert Christoph Dies: "Biographische Nachrichten von Joseph Haydn") The release of Haydn´s Complete Piano Sonatas on 9 albums in 2013 was critically acclaimed throughout the world and nominated 2014 for the International Classical Music Award. The Boston Globe, USA, wrote: “Ekaterina Derzhavina's name was new to me, but this 9-album set of Haydn's complete piano sonatas should broaden her recognition considerably. Her playing is elegant, stylish, and above all imaginative, showing just how creative the composer was ...her feel for Haydn's originality comes through brilliantly.“ She continues her Haydn exploration with this new release, Variations and Pieces for Piano.