"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
The highly acclaimed series of Haydn’s complete piano sonatas with multi-award winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has now reached Volume 6, its halfway point. This set opens with the most imposing of Haydn’s early sonatas, No. 11, and follows it with two lesser-known ones, both from the late 1770s, that were published without the composer’s approval: Nos. 34 and 35. Each of Nos. 36 and 43, the last two featured here, opens a new group of six sonatas, and a new world in Haydn’s compositional style. Future volumes will continue to explore the huge variety of style and expression found in Haydn’s sonatas.
As usual the pianist conveys his personal views in the booklet notes, praising ‘the generally very short phrases typical of Haydn, the abundant touches of humor, the surprises, the embellishments,’ and adding: “The five sonatas in this program are not among the most well known. But what treasures they conceal!...I am delighted to dedicate this disc to Professor Erno Nemecz with whom I have shared a love for Haydn’s music for thirty-five years.”
REVIEW
Six volumes into Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s tour through the complete Haydn Piano Sonatas, listeners will have a pretty good idea of what to expect...a witty, urbane, slightly French-accented take on repertoire that has long cried out for a contemporary champion. This is Haydn for, and of, a new generation.
Wisely ignoring chronology, each volume is a musical lucky dip, throwing together a diverse grouping of works. Volume Six is built around the spacious Sonata in B Flat Major, No. 11. The more sedate E-flat Major Sonata No. 43 feels, by contrast, rather anonymous, despite Bavouzet’s frisky ornaments. This gives way with calculated shock to the expansive grace of the central Minuet and Trio. Bavouzet makes his slow movements sing in silky tone and legatos, but it’s the livelier, comic movements where he really comes into his own. I defy anyone to listen to the irrepressible final Rondo from the Sonata in A Flat Major No. 35, or the slinky, near-jazz of the C Major Sonata’s first movement Allegro and not find themselves grinning with delight at such irreverent, instinctive musicianship.
--Limelight (Alexandra Coghlan)
