There are no finer period-instrument Haydn symphony performances available than these. Using a nearly 50-piece orchestra (thank God!), McGegan captures the music's full grandeur as well as its intimacy. These players sound like a real orchestra, a group with a corporate identity, an attractive ensemble sonority, superb wind soloists, and, miracle of miracles, period strings that don't sound like a den of dying cats. McGegan's phrasing of the "clock" theme in the eponymous symphony's second movement is a model of stylishness and wit--listen and I dare you not to smile.

His pacing throughout is ideal; allegros are swift but not so much as to blur characterful detail. The minuets are perfect; trumpets and drums cut through the texture without turning crude; tuttis really fill the acoustic space, and the dynamic range is aptly wide. No performance of these works follows Haydn's dynamic markings literally, but McGegan's adjustments flow with the music and invariably come across as natural--check out the finale of the "London" Symphony for some particularly telling examples.

The live sonics are generally very good, particularly given the fact that the recordings were made over a three-year period (2007-9). In Symphony No. 88 close miking makes the sound a touch rough in places, and I could do without the applause at the end of each work, but the audience otherwise is extremely well-behaved and extraneous performance noises are happily quite minimal. We need Haydn recordings like this: warm, humorous, affecting, yet fully cognizant of period scholarship and style. They are far too rare.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com



HAYDN Symphonies: No. 104, “London”; No. 88; No. 101, “Clock” • Nicholas McGegan, cond; Philharmonia Baroque O • PHILHARMONIA BAROQUE PBP-02 (75:16) Live: Berkeley, CA 2/10–11/2007, 11/15–16/2008; 9/12–13/2009


Nicholas McGegan and his San Francisco period-instrument ensemble are renowned for their many Handel recordings, but they play music of all eras. This is the first Haydn I’ve heard from them. This 2007 performance of the “London” Symphony is marvelous: The opening Adagio-Allegro brims over with high spirits, highlighted by blazing brass and pounding timpani; the Menuet has grace as well as bounce (McGegan does not play da capo repeats), and the Trio has a delicious lilt, with the merest hint of a luftpause in measure three. The finale is somewhat rough and ready, but its Spiritoso direction is fully realized. Comparisons with other performances do reveal a few shortcomings. As used to be the case in period ensembles, violins are rather dull; those in Richard Hickox’s Collegium Musicum 90 are clean and bright. Hickox’s forces are also better balanced and recorded (by Chandos); McGegan’s woodwinds are often drowned out by screaming trumpets. However, the Hickox has nowhere near the drive and élan of this performance. Nor can McGegan’s strings match the crisp attacks and phenomenal execution of either Colin Davis’s Concertgebouw or Leonard Bernstein’s New York Philharmonic.


The opening Allegro of No. 88 goes beautifully; the movement has no trumpets or timpani. Violins are brighter in 2008, as is the recorded sound. The Largo, however, is a disaster. Bassoons are weak; even when the pair shares the solo line, they are nearly inaudible. Taken even faster (5:30) than the impatient George Szell (5:53), this performance totally misses the movement’s calm beauty. Largos are always difficult; holding the line at a very slow tempo takes enormous concentration and ensemble discipline. Hermann Scherchen almost manages, at a lumbering 10:04; Bernstein’s 7:04 is ideal, in a uniquely lovely rendering. McGegan’s Menuet is back on track; his slow Allegretto works well. The Allegro con spirito finale, again reasonably paced, is also a success—until the coda. In this live performance, McGegan (adrenaline kicking in?) ups the tempo at the last minute, and the final three chords are smudged. Bernstein opts for a ludicrously fast tempo; his virtuoso ensemble pulls it off.


The “Clock” gets a fine performance at mostly consensus tempos; the 2009 sound (they were all at the same site, the First Congregational Church in Berkeley) is more reverberant than before but very well balanced. The Andante is too fast; is McGegan, like Szell, allergic to slow music? The bassoons revive here, but oboe and flute are a bit sour together. Menuet and Finale are magnificent; the wrong-note trumpet joke sounds cleanly, the clarinet-brightened score resounds, and this time the final three chords are crisp.


Good period performances of late Haydn symphonies have been hard to come by. This disc ranks among the best.


FANFARE: James H. North
"...Nicholas McGegan has been honing the San Francisco-based period-instrument Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra for some 25 years. Nor are performances of Haydn’s music in period style anything new. But seldom have his elemental dynamic contrasts sounded so properly in proportion or so mercurial, with the 50 or so players able to play out lustily in fortes and pull back quickly to quieter modes, whether playful, subtle or mysterious...The recordings, made at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, Calif., from 2007 to 2009, were beautifully produced and engineered by David v. R. Bowles...The release of cumulative excitement at the end of each [symphony] is of a kind that tends to happen only in live circumstances."

- James R. Oestreich, The New York Times [June 24, 2011]

HAYDN: String Quartets Op. 55, Nos. 1 - 3

SOMM Recordings is pleased to announce the third volume in Leon McCawley’s much praised series of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Piano Sonatas. Six Sonatas, spanning the years 1767-84, are featured: the earliest No.31 in A-flat major, the latest No.56 in D major while Robert Matthew- Walker provides fascinating booklet notes describing the multifarious effects on his music of Haydn’s enthusiasm for equal temperament. Sonata No.31 in A-flat major is, he says, a continuation of Bach that seems to bypass Mozart and anticipate early Beethoven: “Astonishingly original music, and not just for its time”. The two-movement Sonata No.32 in G minor is a unique and intimate work while No.34 in D major boasts an innovative tonal scheme that disguises its virtuosity with immediately approachable technique. The F major Sonata No.38, notes Matthew-Walker, is “full of that wonderful combination of inner life and directly human expression that is the essence of Haydn”. Two later Sonatas – Nos.55 (B-flat major) and 56 (D major) – arguably saw romantic sonata form tested to its expressive limits by “Haydn’s original genius” and his “thematic developmental-variation technique even today causing surprise for its profoundly original subtleties”. Volume I was recognized with a coveted Diapason d’Or from Diapason magazine, which enthused: “What a range in his interpretation and how many layers of gradation! McCawley ties these together in a special quality of inflexions which make their point with great intelligibility and sensitivity”. BBC Music Magazine declared Volume II “should stand high on any list” of quality recordings of Haydn, adding “the sparkle of McCawley’s touch is instantly apparent”. Gramophone also commended McCawley’s playing, describing it as “light of touch, stylistically assured and brimful of intelligence and wit”.

There have long been rumors circulating that some of Haydn's operas were genuinely funny, but until this recording I doubted it. Nikolaus Harnoncourt has been the only real champion for these works since Antal Dorati, and in this recording he convinces us. From what I can gather, some recitative has been cut, but the plot remains clear; and the music is witty and charming. Composed in 1782, it is called a "dramma eroicomico", a vaguely oxymoronic term, probably meant tongue-in-cheek. The remarkable libretto, originally written for composer Pietro Allessando Guglielmi's opera of the same name 10 years earlier, takes Ariosto's well-known epic, Orlando Furioso, already treated in various tragic forms by Lully, Handel, and Vivaldi, and turns it into a type of farce.

Orlando is the knight nobly torn between love and war, and Alcina is theoretically an evil sorceress. Here, Orlando is so crazy and senseless that the only way the plot can be resolved so that Angelica (who loves having men in love with her) and Medoro (who is so lovesick and scared that he's half comatose) can be happy is for Alcina to give him bad dreams, turn him to stone, lock him in a cave, and finally, drug him with Lethe's waters. Add to this a shepherdess named Eurillia and her father Licone, the pagan King Rodomonte, who is in a constant rage and wants to tear Orlando to shreds, and Orlando's blabbermouth squire, Pasquale, who is always hungry and flirts with Eurilla first for food and then for real, and you get a scenario in which nobody except Orlando takes anything very seriously. Indeed, he deserves to be shut away and have his mind altered. And in the meantime, there are scenes of wrath, jealousy, love, boasting, hunger, and battle--and all of it's for sheer entertainment.

The point, of course, is that the music, when not being simply lovely (much of Angelica's and Medoro's) is genuinely funny (Pasquale's), either within the vocal line or as a result of colorful scoring. It's not Rossini-like funny--broader, more obvious, and almost inviting audience participation--but Haydn is the most nimble of Classical composers and he proves it in this opera.

Every number in the opera is worthy and in the service of the action/comedy/mood, but some are truly special: Medoro's first-act "Parto, ma, oh Dio, non posso", primarily a slow lament, but with wild, confused interruptions; Pasquale's two numbers, the first a catalog of his greatnesses in which he even whistles, the second a piece to show Eurillia how well he sings, trills, and flies up to high notes in falsetto; "Non partir, mia bella face", an aria for Angelica in which her coloratura is a sure sign of inability to cope with what torments her; and Angelica's second-act aria, "Aure chete, verdi allori", that radiates sincerity and then flies off into a coloratura showpiece with the voice in duet with oboes. The recitatives also have real flavor, especially as delivered by the singers here (I believe this set, at least in part, is taken from live concert performances).

The singing is uniformly excellent. The four(!) tenor parts are all well taken by attractive voices, ideally lyrical for this sort of Mozartean, 18th-century bon-bon. Johannes Kalpers' brief stint as Licone is perky; Werner Güra's Medoro is honeyed à la Don Ottavio; Michael Schade's Orlando is sung with big tone and just the right berserk edge; and there's not enough praise for Markus Schäfer's Pasquale--how grand it is that the role is not composed for bass! Christian Gerhaher's Rodomonte is not a big, burly buffo, but rather a baritone paper tiger, filled with menace that goes nowhere, as this character does. Malin Hartelius sings Eurillia with girlish charm, and Elisabeth von Magnus' Alcina is strongly voiced without exaggeration, keeping the comedy/sorcery in perspective.

And in the midst of them all is soprano Patricia Petibon as Angelica, inspired, light as fluff, but with a sharp edge to her tone when necessary. Every word she sings is in character, and she's a master of messa di voce, which she uses wisely. Occasionally her pianissimos are so quiet that they almost disappear, but that's probably just an odd tic of the recording.

Harnoncourt and his Concentus Musicus, as suggested above, are just the right people for the job, bringing out the character in the music and supporting the singers brilliantly. Tempos are fleet, but there's no sense of rushing; when a moment is supposed to be melodramatic, it is. An old, well-cast (Auger, Ameling, Shirley) recording on Philips under Dorati takes 20 minutes longer, and last time I heard it--10 years ago--it didn't cohere for me. This new version is a must-have. [6/26/2006]

--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

Like Friedrich Gulda and Martha Argerich, the Swiss pianist Brigitte Meyer comes from the Viennese talent factory of the great teacher Bruno Seidlhofer. Her long international career has taken her to the world's foremost stages and together with outstanding musicians. Now she is releasing an album with works by Joseph Haydn with GENUIN in the Artist Consort series. In a period of more than thirty years, Haydn wrote over sixty piano sonatas: from the beginning of his service at the court of Esterházy to the years of his fame in Europe. Brigitte Meyer plays four of these esprit-packed works with great delicacy and elastic drive.

The Heidelberger Sinfoniker have named conductor Johannes Klumpp as their Artistic Director for the 2020/2021 season. In so doing, they have chosen him as successor to their founder Thomas Fey, who established the “Heidelberg Symphonists” as one of the leading historically informed orchestras for the Classical and early Romantic periods. Johannes Klumpp was educated in Weimar and is Principal Conductor of the Folkwang Chamber Orchestra of Essen and Artistic Director of the Summer Music Academy at Schloss Hundisburg. As guest conductor, he has stood before notable orchestras such as the Dresden Festspielorchester, the Stuttgart Staatsorchester, the MDR Symphony Orchestra, the Düsseldorf Symphony, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and many more. Johannes Klumpp has already attracted attention with his interpretations and recordings of the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and is regarded as an established expert on period performance practice. Together we aim to focus our eyes on Joseph Haydn and raise the approach to his symphonies to the musicological state of the art. A path to Haydn. A path with Haydn.

REVIEW:

Armida brings out the best in Cecilia Bartoli as a performer. Her tone is ravishingly beautiful when it needs to be - you need go no further than her first aria, a gorgeous prayer for Rinaldo, to find evidence of that - but when she is required to turn on the vocal fireworks, as for Armida’s great aria of fury in Act 2, she does so with thrilling precision and passion. She is at her finest in the final act when Armida’s power is on the wane, heartbreaking in the great aria Ah, non ferir, then spitting fury as she goes off to exact her revenge.

Patricia Petibon gives Bartoli a real run for her money as the second lady. The voice is of a very different quality to Bartoli’s - sweeter and more innocent, less knowing - but it is every bit as delicious, from the gently winsome quality of her first aria to the intentionally strident and very impressive hysterics of her aria at the beginning of Act 2. She also makes a most beguiling nymph in the third act.

When Bartoli and Prégardien come together, however, things improve enormously, and their Act 1 duet, when he tries to convince her of his faithfulness, is a real treat, both beautiful in its opening section and then exhilarating in its coloratura. Markus Schäfer gives a very attractive turn as Clotarco and Scot Weir’s Ubaldo is fine. Oliver Widmer’s Idreno is not pleasant, though, sounding disagreeably unfocused in his opening aria with little improvement later.

I’m not normally a fan of Harnoncourt in music of this period - I find his Mozart infuriating - and generally I find Concentus Musicus Wien to be so abrasive as to be devoid of pleasure in much of their playing. However, I actually found their style to be pretty effective here. It is a martial opera, after all, and the harsh edge on the brass, as well as in some of the other orchestral tuttis, helps to evoke the atmosphere of war. The string playing doesn’t always sound thin and pinched, either, and they are the finest thing about the scene in Act 2 where Rinaldo’s indecision is invested with the intensity of a mad scene.

Harnoncourt does occasionally pull the tempo around a bit, as though he can’t quite help himself, but he still shapes the work with conviction, and it’s worth remembering that this was a rather neglected opera when this performance took place, so he probably felt the need to inject a certain something into his interpretation so as to make contemporary audiences sit up and take notice that little bit more. I can turn a blind eye to most of it if it means being reacquainted with Haydn’s music in such a successful way. The corking Trio that ends the second act is completely thrilling, bringing out the finest dramatic instincts of the singers, orchestra and conductor.

Both CDs are ingeniously packaged in a single case and the booklet contains an interesting essay by David Wyn Jones. At a price like this there is no need to hesitate.

– MusicWeb International (Simon Thompson)

Under the title Gli impresari, The Impresarios – i.e. the directors of the theatre troupes that Nikolaus I, Prince Esterházy engaged to perform in his opera houses – this album gathers together some of the orchestral works by Joseph Haydn linked by their origin and their reception; they were originally conceived as theatre music, before their metamorphosis into symphonies. The period from 1772 onwards, when Karl Wahr was responsible for the summer theatre programme at Esterháza, saw the peak of the multidisciplinary collaboration taking place between the court music directed by Haydn and companies engaged from outside. At the end of 1775 and the beginning of 1776, while Joseph Haydn was occupied in transforming his music for Collé’s comedy into a symphony for concert performance, Karl Wahr was enjoying enormous success with his theatrical entertainments in the ballroom at the theatre in Salzburg. It was there, on 3 January 1776, that Thamos, King of Egypt was staged, a heroic drama whose choruses, musicologists now believe, were composed by none other than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart; for this Salzburg performance he also composed four instrumental entractes (recorded for this album) as well as a melodrama and a Don Giovanni-esque descent into hell.

Includes work(s) by Franz Joseph Haydn.

Composed in the summer and autumn of 1781, Haydn’s Op. 33 Quartets were dedicated to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia and premiered on Christmas Day that year in the apartment of the Duke’s wife, the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna. Nicknamed ‘the Russian quartets’, Op. 33 were some of Mozart’s favourites among Haydn’s works, and inspired Mozart to write his own set of six quartets, of 1785, dedicated to Haydn. Generally light in nature, the Op. 33 are extremely tuneful works, all set in major keys (apart from No. 1, in B minor), and all written in four movements. Founded in 1998, and exclusive Chandos recording artists since 2010, the Doric String Quartet has established itself as one of the leading quartets of its generation, receiving enthusiastic responses from audiences and critics alike. Previous releases in this series of Quartets by Haydn have been acclaimed by critics around the world.

Markus Becker writes: “Solitude, or, more exactly, isolation, is what marked Haydn’s biography the most. Composing at the Esterházy court, he lived far from Vienna, without having to bother with the distractions of socializing among the upper set in the Imperial city. Haydn could remain at one with himself and his music, as he famously stated himself: “No one near could confuse me, so I was forced to become original.” Perhaps his situation in those surroundings allowed him the inner freedom to write a sort of music that seems to remain at one with itself. Of course this music is also “asking” to be awoken into sound, to be heard by others. Yet in another way, in a spectacularly unspectacular manner, it seems to be thoroughly introspective, listening to itself.

"Bavouzet’s Haydn is unmatched in its zest and its wit. But it is also substantial, informed and deeply rewarding."

--The New York Times on Bavouzet's Haydn Sonatas cycle, 2022

Following his acclaimed recording of Beethoven’s concertos with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet returns to his exploration of Haydn’s sonatas, described by the magazine Gramophone as ‘a major modern recording landmark in the Haydn discography’.

As in previous installments, Bavouzet has programmed sonatas from Haydn’s early, middle, and late periods, giving added interest to the recital. Sonatas Nos. 10 and 2, dating from the 1750s and ’60s respectively, share the key of C major, but differ in form. The short No. 2 was almost certainly written for pupils whilst Haydn was working as a teacher. No. 10 is more ambitious and extensive. Sonatas Nos. 41 and 44 date from the early 1770s and show some influence from C.P.E. Bach and the Sturm und Drang [Storm and Stress] movement. More virtuosic than the earlier sonatas, in these the trademark humor of Haydn is also more evident. Sonatas Nos. 52 and 53 were composed a decade later and are conspicuously more demanding, technically and musically. As in the case of the previous volumes, this album was recorded at Potton Hall in Suffolk, on a Yamaha CFX Concert Grand Piano.

REVIEW

I am tempted to set my morning alarm to go off with Bavouzet’s Haydn C major Sonata; it’s guaranteed to fill the room with sunshine and youthful energy...all in all this is another remarkable addition to Bavouzet’s invaluable survey.

--Gramophone (Michelle Assay)

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s ongoing [Haydn] survey on Chandos is one of the glories of the 21st-century record industry, nine volumes and counting of playing that is poised and polished, as well as ideally flamboyant and aptly witty.

--New York Times (David Allen)

As ever in his Haydn cycle, Bavouzet provides a stimulating mix. Listen in turn to a cheerily scampering Sonata 10; a grand, poetic, dazzling personality in Sonata 44; a Sonata 2 in turns imposing and with a rounded melodiousness. All that is before Sonata 52’s sureness of melody, immensely varied rhythmically and in mood, and Sonata 53’s cagey then engaging hurtle.

--MusicWeb International (Michael Greenhalgh)

Michael Haydn’s colorful and inventive music is uplifting and expressive in equal measure, but his music has been eclipsed by that of his elder brother Joseph, and by Mozart. Sacred music is central to Michael Haydn’s oeuvre and was considered by some contemporary critics as superior to Joseph’s. Encompassing a broad range of textures and styles, parts of the Missa Sancti Nicolai Tolentini demonstrate Haydn’s music at its most exhilarating and energetic, and his supreme gift for empfindsames (‘sensitive’) lyrical writing is also to be heard in the Vespers.

Haydn’s stupendous, joyous and uplifting oratorio Die Schöpfung (The Creation) is thrillingly brought to life in this recording with Andrés Orozco-Estrada conducting the Houston Symphony, with the Houston Symphony Chorus and the acclaimed operatic soloists Nicole Heaston, Toby Spence and Peter Rose. With its startling dramatic gestures, bold orchestral colours and sublimely beautiful word painting, Haydn’s astonishing depiction of the Genesis creation story remains his supreme masterpiece and one of the best-loved works in the entire choral repertoire. In a vivid series of tableaux, from the creation of light to Adam and Eve’s love duet, Haydn brings to life the birds, beasts and angels which all rejoice in soaring, life-affirming music. Andres Orozco-Estrada writes: “What I love most about this piece is the tone painting and the richly colored way the music describes nature and animals. We tried to give the listener the possibility to imagine the musical illustrations Haydn composed in the “Creation,” which distinguish this outstanding work of art from others.”

A few years ago Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra released a glorious disc containing Haydn symphonies Nos. 88, 101 and 104. Well, they’ve done it again, and their achievement is even more impressive in that this time they have chosen three relatively unknown, middle-period symphonies. None have nicknames, and few get played in modern concerts. I did see Leonard Slatkin–a champion of little-known Haydn–give a superb performance of No. 67, but other than that you’ll be lucky to hear any of these symphonies live.

This doesn’t mean that the music lacks anything in the way of interest. No. 67 is one of Haydn’s most original creations, with a slow movement that features a delicious coda played by the strings “col legno” (with the back of the bow), a trio of the minuet for two muted solo violins–one of them retuned–and a finale with a central “development” that starts as a string trio in an adagio tempo. It’s an amazing piece, and this performance relishes every striking detail.

Symphony No. 57 starts with a surprisingly unsettling slow introduction whose eerie grace notes return, purged of their unease, in the fleet main theme of the finale. No. 68 places the minuet second because the slow movement is probably the longest that Haydn ever wrote. It lasts more than twelve minutes in this performance (fourteen under Harnoncourt), but it’s so full of variety that the time passes without a thought. The finale is a “variation” rondo whose episodes constitute a veritable concerto for orchestra.

In short, each symphony has something special and characteristic to offer, and each gives McGegan and his ensemble an opportunity to display their individual and corporate musicianship and virtuosity. The strings play with precision and warmth. McGegan clearly knows when to sound “authentic,” and when to let his players sing. The solo winds and horns are excellent, ensemble balances invariably what they ought to be to let each work communicate vividly. The live sonics, a touch close and maybe very slightly edgy, actually suit the boldness and panache of the music. Haydn lovers rejoice.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com