The selection on this CD is a cross-section of the composer's successive creative phases. Haydn composed keyboard music over about four decades (ca. 1755-1796). In his day, the word "Clavier" was used as a generic term for various keyboard instruments that coexisted, namely the harpsichord, the clavichord, and the fortepiano (Hammerflugel). Although on this recording I have decided to record all works on a modern grand piano, I found it important to take into account which instruments these pieces were intended for when deciding on matters of interpretation and performance. (Schaghajegh Nosrati)
Led by the Russian-born violinist Sasha Jacobsen, the Musical Art Quartet was was one of the preeminent quartets established in the US. In fact, the famed cellist Gregor Piatigorsky proclaimed that the Musical Art Quartet was the greatest quartet he ever heard. First violinist Jacobsen made numerous solo recordings before he established the Musical Art Quartet, but is probably best known as the fourth and final name of the popular Gershwin song "Mischa, Jascha, Toscha and Sascha", the forenames of four renowned Russian-Jewish violinists: Elman, Heifetz, Seidel and Jacobsen. Furthermore, the violist in the Musical Art Quartet was none other than Louis Kaufman, a major violin soloist in his own right. Jacobsen formed the Musical Art Quartet in 1926, and this CD features the ensemble's complete recordings of quartets by Haydn and Schubert made for the Columbia label in the late-1920s. Their recording of Haydn's Cmajor Quartet, op.54 no.2, is the first complete recording of a Haydn quartet ever made. Although the Quartet lasted for over two decades, this CD contains the group's only recordings of the quartet repertoire. Supplementing this historic CD release are comprehensive notes by the chamber music expert Tully Potter.
Here Joseph Haydn's music is revealed as the perfect expression of truth. And the Auryn's performance of his string quartets is exactly as it should be: vigorous, beautiful to listen to, and full of feeling. A rediscovery both of sheer beauty and intellectual development.'
Composer: Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)
Performers: Matthias Lingenfelder, violin Jens Oppermann, violin Stewart Eaton, viola Andreas Arndt, violoncello
Track Listing: 1. String quartet op. 17 no. 1, Hob. III:25 in E major Moderato 2. Menuet 3. Adagio 4. Finale. Presto 5. String quartet op. 17 no. 2, Hob. III:26 in F major Moderato 6. Menuet. Poco allegretto 7. Adagio 8. Finale. Allegro di molto 9. String quartet op. 17 no. 3, Hob. III:27 in E flat major Andante grazioso 10. Menuet. Allegretto 11. Adagio 12. (Finale). Allegro di molto 13. String quartet op. 17 no. 4, Hob. III:28 in C minor Moderato 14. Menuet. Allegretto 15. Adagio. Cantabile 16. Finale. Allegro 17. String quartet op. 17 no. 5, Hob. III:29 in G major Moderato 18. Menuet. Allegretto 19. Adagio 20. Finale. Presto 21. String quartet op. 17 no. 6, Hob. III:30 in D major Presto 22. Menuet 23. Largo 24. Finale. Allegro
Hummel: Cello Sonata, Piano Quintet, Etc / Comberti, Et Al
Naxos
CD
$19.99Nov 15, 2005
Naxos continues its championing of Hummel with a disc that regrettably also serves as an in memoriam to that fine British violinist Micaela Comberti, one of whose final recordings this must have been. She died at the early age of fifty-one.
We’ve come to admire Hummel’s concertante works recently and recordings of his choral music have opened up hitherto under-explored areas, greatly to our advantage. In fact it might be argued that we are now moving away from Hummel the virtuoso keyboard exponent, so beloved by pianists of the Golden Age, to a reflective transitional period in which his large-scale choral works are increasingly taking their place on the fringes of the canon. And not before time.
Which is not to overlook the reams of chamber music that he wrote throughout his life, and which is the raison d’être of this new release. Hummel was a gloriously fluent composer but that very articulacy could sometimes lead to a preponderance of note-spinning, repetition and a surfeit of what one might call concertante bluffness. That’s certainly the case here but only from time to time.
The Piano Quartet was published posthumously in 1839 and is cast in two movements. There is some languorous phraseology in the opening Andante cantabile, even if the fortepiano does sound rather recessed in this recording spectrum but there’s a concerto-sized Allegro to contrast with it. The string players provide the cushion – and the tuttis – for the sturdily striding piano part – all very attractive if not especially distinctive. The much earlier G major Piano Trio is a suavely laid out three-movement work that reveals Hummel’s consummate professionalism. The over-long opening movement is followed by a Minuet, with plenty of gusto in this performance as Susan Alexander-Max detonates some left-hand fortepiano fillips amidst a certain amount of trenchancy. The Rondo finale is light-hearted with a sparkling piano part - naturally, as Hummel was a leading virtuoso on the instrument - a sliver of a fugato, and a certain Beethovenian feel to some of the piano writing.
In 1826 Hummel completed a Cello Sonata, a big work, romantic, spacious and immediately attractive. The piano part has a touching nobility of expression, but also a welcome incision, one that here tends very occasionally to over-balance the more reticent cello in passagework. Again the material can be over-stretched but it hardly lacks for melodic interest, not least in the lied of the Romance, which possesses a suave beauty - the word ‘suave’ tends to rise unbidden when thinking of Hummel - but also a contrasting declamatory section. Easy-going, and full of strongly accented figures, Banda and Alexander-Max do well by the folk-like pages of the finale in particular, and they complete a successful traversal with a degree of panache.
The F major Trio is the earliest work here, dating from 1807, and reveals the powerful influence of Haydn. From the gemütlich opening, the unrolling fugal passages - which soon give up the ghost - and the variational second movement, this is very much in the Viennese tradition, solidly classical and topped by a fashionable - or maybe just past it - Turkish Rondo finale.
The sonorities evoked by the well-versed ensemble of baroque instrument practitioners are most attractive and add a certain tangy frisson. Sometimes the recording in Weston Parish Church loses a degree of focus and string instruments can be over-balanced by the fortepiano but this doesn’t happen too often. Spirited and lyrical, though not invariably convincing, this is another feather in the Naxos Hummel cap.
