My Haydn Year Diary

Hello again! Just a quick note to draw your attention to some exciting developments on planet Haydn. First of all, my ‘prosecution’ of the Harnoncourt recording of the ‘Paris’ Symphonies is in the latest (July) issue of Gramophone, along with Jed Distler’s ‘defence’. It all started last September when I stood next to Jed’s CD shelves in his apartment overlooking the Hudson and West New York, and he indicated this set and described it as something along the lines of ‘the best Haydn recording of recent years’. I know it won a Gramophone Award but it’s a set that’s always been irritated me as much as I’ve enjoyed it. So I had great fun digging into it and comparing it with other recordings for the new ‘Trial’ feature. For what it’s worth, my advice would be to go for Thomas Fey and his Heidelbergers in the ‘Paris’ Symphonies, except that they’re spread over three separate discs (which would be even more annoying if their couplings of Symphonies Nos 69 and 88 weren’t so damn good). Anyway, if you vehemently disagree with Threasher’s considered view (or even with Distler’s), you can now vent your spleen over at Gramophone’s online forum.

Also on the shelves at the moment is the May/June issue of International Piano, which contains my review of the available recordings of the ‘Gypsy Rondo’ Trio. Not quite such a challenging exercise as my Bartók Concerto for Orchestra Collection in the April Gramophone – shorter piece, fewer recordings, not left to the last minute by a lazy freelancer – but great fun to do. Susan Tomes of the Florestan Trio has already blogged about the piece over on her site.

On the ‘to do’ pile at the moment are the newly released set of ‘London’ Symphonies from Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre, which I’ll be covering for the September Gramophone (it may sound far off but the busy people at Gram Towers started putting it together last Thursday). The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Ton Koopman have embarked on their own ‘London’ cycle with Nos 97 and 98, a disc that plopped onto the doormat just yesterday. Plenty of listening there (and I’m impressed so far) – not to mention comparative listening to Frans Brüggen’s ‘London’ Symphonies, recordings I’m only now getting to know, and that I have to admit I’m being happily and pleasantly surprised by. I also managed to dig out a pair of Japanese SACDs by the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden containing Nos 31, 72 and 73, and Nos 92, 94 and 97. My reviews of Nos 48 and 56 from that man Fey and Mozart’s Nos 39 and 40 from René Jacobs and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra will shortly appear in the August issue of Gramophone. Last year’s Haydn commemorations seem to have woken quite a few people up, and we’re enjoying the harvest of their labours now. Alleluia!

At last Thomas Fey’s Heidelberg recording of Symphonies Nos 48 and 56 – long promised – has landed. It’s a fascinating listen but I’ll not go into too much detail here, as I’m covering it for a well known consumer classical music magazine. Not only that but Proper Note have announced that they’re about to start distributing a pair of recordings on the Japanese Exton label: Jaap van Zweden and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic in the horn-heavy symphonies Nos 31, 72 and 73 (with Harnoncourt the benchmark in La chasse), and Nos 92, 94 and 97. I also glean that a complete set of ‘London’ Symphonies from Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre is out already in France on the Naïve label, so that should hit the UK in the next few weeks. Out even sooner is the latest issue of the magazine mentioned above. It’s the new look, with new features, new fat fonts and my review of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s first volume of Haydn’s piano sonatas, which I am happy to recommend alongside recordings of similar rep by Leif Ove Andsnes and Marc-André Hamelin.

I know, I know – sightings of the common or garden Threasher blog are so rare they’re becoming an endangered species. I just thought I’d let those of you still following that the next few days are your last chance to buy the April issue of Gramophone, which contains my Collection looking at the available recordings of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and also my Top Ten Musical Farewells. Not only that but the next issue of International Piano will contain my comparison of discs of Haydn’s ‘Gypsy Rondo’ Trio.

What with all that writing (plus a grab-bag of CD booklet notes which should see the light of day later this year), not to mention a trip to Bamberg on behalf of Gramophone, time for idle Haydn-blogging has been short. Fear not, for I’ll return to it anon! I was in Bamberg a couple of weekends ago to see the final of the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition. There will be a little piece in the June issue of Gram but in the meantime you can get some east European name-pronunciation practice here. The winner (of whom we’ll doubtless be hearing more very soon) has an exotic string of diacritics on his name but they’re far too advanced for the computers of today.

One other thing: following the almost complete cessation of Thomas Fey’s Haydn cycle last year (although I enjoyed his Mendelssohn as much as James Jolly), news comes from Stuttgart that Hänssler Classic are poised to release another couple of instalments in months to come. Something to look forward to!

So 2009, the 200th anniversary of Haydn’s death, was a year of mixed emotions. There was joy at the number of recordings – not least among them the completion of Naxos’s symphony cycle and the new survey by Dennis Russell Davies – and at the range of concerts that were offered. We all now have the complete baryton trios in our CD collections (don’t we). And Radio 3 decreed, following a public vote, that Haydn was almost as good a composer as Handel.

Disappointments, though: there’s still no complete cycle of the symphonies on ‘authentic’ instruments – and indeed, there are still a handful of symphonies to my knowledge yet to be recorded by period bands. The Freiburg Baroque Orchestra helpfully and thrillingly provided No 80 in one of my favourite discs of the year but, thanks to the demise of Hogwood’s series some years ago, Nos 79 and 81 remain unrepresented by the brown-rice-and-sandals brigade. And I’m beginning to despair of ever finding a copy of Hogwood’s Vol 9, which I suspect might not actually exist, and is just a story made up to frighten children. A bottle of wine to anyone who could lend me a copy …

I resolve, though, to carry on my Haydn-blogging. Not least because I’ve enjoyed the listening, the writing and the feedback; but also to fight in my own small way to keep this greatest of classical composers in the eye of the public and in the minds of record company execs and concert and festival organisers. I’m a little snowed under by Bartók at the moment, for reasons too mundane to elucidate here. But as soon as I’ve discharged my duty by the great Hungarian, I’ll be back to normal, writing far too irregularly about Haydn – and I hope to broaden my net and write about some other records that come my way. Thanks for reading over the past year — and keep watching this space!

Read a short obituary of HC Robbins Landon on the Gramophone website here.

Sometimes I fear we’re fighting a losing battle. In last Sunday’s Observer, Fiona Maddocks reviews what she describes as ‘Haydn’s Philosopher Symphony No 92’ [sic: I can assure horrified readers that No 22, not the ‘Oxford’, was performed], while in Monday’s Guardian, something called Alfred Hickling identifies the ‘lachrymose’ Adagio of Symphony No 99 as ‘a funerary tribute to Mozart’ – when it’s No 98 whose slow movement is traditionally considered to be Haydn’s farewell to his young friend. Not that the Northern Sinfonia (whose performance of No 99 was thus reviewed) are any help, identifying No 99 on their website as the first of Haydn’s ‘London’ Symphonies. What hope have we of inspiring and building new, young audiences (the holy grail of classical music marketing) when those who write about it professionally clearly have absolutely no idea what they’re listening to? Combine this idiocy with Radio 3 presenters who can’t even be bothered to read the booklet notes of the CDs they’re playing and it makes me wonder what the point of it all is. I’ve just written a piece for Gramophone’s January 2010 issue about how composer anniversaries can bring about reappraisals of their reputations: clearly this year’s celebrations haven’t inspired Fiona Maddocks (who really should know better), Sara Mohr-Pietsch, Sarah Walker (see my previous posting) or the Northern Sinfonia’s marketing department to have any more engagement with this great music than the bare minimum they need to collect their pay cheques at the end of the month. They should be ashamed of themselves.

I must stop getting worked up like this! While pondering a suitable tribute to HC Robbins Landon for Gramophone, here are some thoughts on a festive symphony – inappropriate, you might think, but it’s one of the symphonies whose sound world gave Robbie the title for his memoirs ten years ago: Horns in High C! At least, they’re in high C in some of these recordings …

Symphony No 30 gets its nickname, ‘Alleluja’, from its use of the Easter plainchant in the first movement’s inner parts. It’s the only Haydn symphony from its period (1765) that reverts to a three-movement layout, the finale being a minuet with two trios. Kicking off once again with Antal Dorati, we hear a moderate four-in-a-bar Allegro with washy oboes but excellent strings, a harpsichord doggedly twanging away and no second repeat. There’s some fine flute work in the slow movement and good winds again in the finale. That was from 1971; the next available recording comes from a full fifteen years later, and Cantilena with Adrian Shepherd. I’m not a fan of these recordings, with indistinct sound and a matter-of-fact aspect to the performances, which presumably comes from lack of rehearsal. The harpsichord is prominent again and the sluggish opening movement (despite decent horns) is one of the few times you wish he hadn’t taken the second repeat (‘Oh God no,’ as Robin Holloway might say). The slow movement is drab and the finale plods on uneventfully.

Christopher Hogwood followed a couple of years afterwards and offers good horns and clear evidence that attention is paid to Haydn’s part-writing, with some especially rich violas. The slow movement isn’t especially exciting but the finale is taken at a good lick, perhaps at the expense of phrase-shaping. Then came Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus Wien, who offer the version with trumpets and sound easily the most festive among all these performances. Harnoncourt understands how to turn these symphonies into theatre, not least by leaning on accents and extremes of dynamics. He cunningly keeps his oboes in check in the first movement so they can make more of an impact in the second, which he takes fairly briskly, rendering it less dry than some readings. He differentiates tempos in the finale, taking the Ländler slower and the minore faster. Concentration never drops, and it’s very effective.

Nicholas Ward was in the driver’s seat for the Naxos entry in 1992. This is let down not least by enervating recorded sound; there’s a harpsichord but no trumpets in this largely characterless read-through. Adam Fischer offers the version with trumpets (but no drums) in a lithe reading of the Allegro with a light-footed string tone that really helps the movement go with a swing – and how his violinists love biting down on the G string! There are Fischer’s usual liberties with the written notes, for example the horns dropping out in bars 58 and 62 (and his solo-strings tendency in the finale). The slow movement is lovely, although the flute rushes in bars 37–44 (its demisemiquaver passage), and Fischer inserts an unmarked da capo between the Ländler and the minore in the minuet.

For something a little different, try Martin Haselböck, who offers a performance that sounds a little like a church sonata, with organ accompaniment and gutty-sounding strings. And of course, the latest entry is from Dennis Russell Davies and his Stuttgarters, a small-scale string band and up-front winds. There’s a harpsichord fairly forward in the mix but no trumpets. Brisk tempos all round; all repeats but a slightly flustered flute in the Andante. The minuet is the fastest of them all – no chance of dancing to this! By the way, at the risk of blowing my own trumpet (or high horn) too often, look out for my review of the Davies set in the January 2010 issue of Gramophone.

So it remains Harnoncourt for the most highly theatrical ‘Alleluja’, with none of the others really consistent enough to be among the top choices. Where’s the recording that treats this almost as a concerto, letting high horns sing out in the first movement and allowing the flute to lead the way in the second? And – nevertheless and notwithstanding – why has such a glorious little work been treated to so few outings on disc? It’s something I’d like to have heard Tafelmusik take on, for example, and I wait with baited breath to hear what Thomas Fey (pupil of Harnoncourt and Bernstein, two great Haydn conductors) has to say about the ‘Alleluja’, if Hännsler haven’t knocked his cycle on the head.

Next up: the ‘Mercury’ Symphony, once I’ve thought of a decent pun for the headline. In the meantime I’m gathering my thoughts about some sets of ‘Paris’ Symphonies I’ve been listening to. Oh yes – the ‘junction’ in the title of this evening’s post? A little reference to that fact that I’ve moved, with my dusty pile of Haydn discs, to new premises in west London: relocation being one of life’s little junctions, perhaps. Alleluja!

Sad to learn on opening The Guardian this morning of the death last week of HC Robbins Landon. It’s probably fair to say that if it were not for him, I wouldn’t be doing what I do now. I’m writing a tribute for the Gram website that I’ll post here as well later on.

‘Symphony No 89,’ writes Richard Wigmore, ‘has always been overshadowed by the more obvious attractions of No 88.’ For me, it’s the symphony that triggered my quest to find the best Haydn symphony recordings: it’s the least-recorded of all of Haydn’s late symphonies, and it was a hunt for the long-deleted Frans Brüggen recording that sowed the seed that has blossomed into this blog.

It’s a characteristically Haydnesque mixture of the courtly and the rustic, the poise of its opening theme contrasting with the wide-eyed simplicity of the second subject. Of course, the whole movement is shot through with the thrilling contrapuntal cross-play that is so much a hallmark of Haydn’s symphonic style: there’s far more to this symphony than it often receives credit for. The slow movement is a borrowing from a lira organizzata concerto that Haydn completed not long before, transported almost note-for-note bar the souping-up of the woodwind parts. The minuet and trio again hint at outdoor music, and the finale is another borrowing from the same lira concerto, this time with the addition of a fierce minor-key episode that functions as the movement’s development. Haydn also adds the marking strascinando where the opening theme returns after a dominant pedal. Strascinando means ‘dragging’ but apart from that no clues are given as to how to interpret it, so it’s – tellingly – left up to the imaginations of the performers.

As chance would have it, Radio 3’s Haydn symphony cycle reached No 89 yesterday. Not only that, but the very same lira concerto (Hob VIIh:5) was played during the Breakfast programme earlier the same morning. Strange, though, that neither presenter (Sara Mohr-Pietsch and Sarah Walker) made reference to the fact that they’d played ostensibly the same music in two works less than two hours apart. One wonders whether many of the presenters on Radio 3 actually have any engagement with the music they’re playing: in this case it’s fairly clear that neither of them even managed to read the CD notes. SMP didn’t even mention that what she’d played was an arrangement (the one on the recent Naxos disc), the lira part presented on two recorders. Too much to expect the nation’s classical broadcaster to employ presenters who know what they’re talking about, I suppose.

I’ve gathered together eleven recordings of Symphony No 89: comparing that with the forty or more of No 88 gathering dust under my desk goes to show how neglected it has been. Starting, as so often, with Antal Dorati, we hear a performance in which nothing is rushed, with some notable wind work. For Dorati the word strascinando implies portamento between the held C and the opening F of the main theme but no elongation of tempo. That recording, which still more than holds its own, was made in 1971 (it’s the same age as me). Shortly afterwards – I can’t find an exact date – Karl Böhm and the VPO offer clarity and ensemble at generally steady tempos, with a real build-up of tension in the opening movement’s development. There’s what sounds like a large but well-disciplined string section and again good wind playing, despite the oboe sounding like a soprano saxophone on helium; the woodwinds chatter away in the finale but there’s no attempt at strascinando.

The next recording in this survey, from the London Mozart Players and Jane Glover, followed in 1988. Glover directs a fairly moderate jog-trot through the symphony and the constricted recording does few favours to instrumental separation or dynamic range. The period-instrument crew got to No 89 shortly afterwards with La Petite Bande and Sigiswald Kuijken. His isn’t the most pacy performance, with harpsichord accompaniment and no second repeat in the first movement. The string sound is characteristically steely and Kuijken leaves unnecessary pauses before the opening movement’s second subject and at the double bar into the development. The slow movement is more largo than andante con moto but features all repeats; there is a nice Ländler lilt to the trio. The finale is somewhat staid for vivace assai, with little attempt made at strascinando. Here and elsewhere, sequential passages can sound rather like hard work.

Adam Fischer and his Austro-Hungarians joined the fray in 1991. There’s a lovely boomy sound to the string section (which can come over all Mantovani in places) although the wind are a little more distant – a shame, as they’re really the heroes of the performance! The slow movement is apt for a lilting siciliano, the minuet excitingly horn-dominated, the trio sweetly rustic. The finale is good and brisk, the strascinando effect theatrically played up. Béla Drahos followed a couple of years later with Naxos’s offering. Tempos are good and woodwinds clear but the performance as a whole is too metronomic and unyielding. The players throw themselves into it nevertheless – listen for the sizzle of rosin on string as the first movement’s development gets under way. The finale – more lightweight than Fischer – is largely successful, although the strascinando instruction is ignored. A little more natural rubato would have made this one of the finest recordings in the Naxos series.

No 89 was among the symphonies recorded during the 1990s by Tafelmusik and Bruno Weil. At last here is a performance with lithe tempos, good dynamic contrasts (especially fine piano playing), noticeable separation between first and second violins and a clear joy in Haydn’s wind writing. Only the lack of a second repeat mars the first movement. The slow movement is faster than usual but not so much so that it sounds rushed, the wind lines and pizzicato strings sounding well together. The minuet is fashionably brisk and the finale zips along, more being made this time of the strascinando effect.

Frans Brüggen’s recording, which I hunted so hard for, turns out to be something of a disappointment. It’s a big-sounding, vivacious reading but it’s marred by a strange recorded sound (pianos especially seem to disappear down a black hole) that also affects the Sinfonia concertante on the same disc (but not the Symphony No 88 that comes in between). That’s a shame, as there are some nice points – the explosive minore in the slow movement, for example – in among the bad ones, such as the same movement’s lack of a first repeat. Brüggen’s is an interesting approach to strascinando, stretching out the held C and delaying the resolution onto the F.

Douglas Bostock conducts the Bohemia Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra, with a prominent, tinkly harpsichord accompaniment, making it sound more like a jolly divertissement than a mature symphony: the slow movement is especially twee. Simon Rattle’s 2007 recording is fussily over-ornamented, the minuet suffocated by micro-management, the finale blasé, especially where it fails to step up a gear as it descends into F minor. Tempo tends to correlate to dynamic, the first movement’s syncopated section noticeably rushing. There’s no second repeat in the first movement, while on the other hand the finale’s strascinando is well taken.

And along comes Dennis Russell Davies, as if out of nowhere! This is a punchy performance but be warned that there’s a harpsichord continuo. The slow movement is taken at a fair tempo, although the minuet is slower than we’re used to these days. Davies makes a slight rallentando, nothing more, at the strascinando points, but it’s otherwise a light and charming finale. I’m sticking to Fischer for the time being, though, with Weil the period-instrument alternative.

Once again it’s been too long since I’ve written anything here. Still, perhaps I’ll get quicker with Windows 7. Here’s what’s been keeping me from the keyboard.

This year’s Proms was my first experience of standing in the bearpit, and I don’t know why I insisted on a stalls seat for so many years. Having the world’s finest string sections playing three yards away from your nose is quite a privilege: standing front row house left is really is the best seat in the house! Aside from McCreesh’s Creation early in the season, Haydn’s showing was fairly disappointing – especially when Nikolaus Harnoncourt cancelled and his replacement, Franz Welser-Möst, changed the programme to include Symphony No 98, presumably because he didn’t know Harnoncourt’s planned No 97. Jansons did a fine ‘Military’, at least until he fluffed the punchline by having the Turkish percussionists file on to the front of the stage at the end. Osmo Vänskä did a gloriously old-fashioned ‘Clock’ that was swept away by Joshua Bell in a radiant Brahms Concerto. Alison Balsom offered a fine Trumpet Concerto as part of the Last Night Celebrations; at the opposite end of the season there was a choral Seven Last Words, which I’m glad to have heard. But there were no symphonies (or concertos) earlier than the London period, and (apart from the Seven Last Words) nothing particularly rare or surprising.

Other highlights for me, though, were the National Youth Orchestra in a searing performance of Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, Leonidas Kavakos in a breathtaking Bartók Second Concerto, and Andriessen’s De staat – so loud that standing on the rail might have been a mistake. The circus was in town for Lang Lang in the Second Chopin Concerto, and Martha Argerich stole the season as much with her Scarlatti encore as with her Ravel G major. And the advantage of being in the hall means you can avoid the dumber-than-dumb television presentation, which gives arts broadcasting in this country a truly bad name.

Then to the States for a holiday, where the soundtrack was The Beatles, initially in remastered stereo, with that hard-right/hard-left panning that makes the iPod listener feel as if half his head is missing, and then in mono, far more punchy, present and compelling. Back home for the Gramophone Awards and a reminder that a number of people have independently commended Lifetime Achievement winner Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s ‘Paris’ Symphonies as one of the finest Haydn recordings of them all: I beg, for many reasons, to differ, and may return to that before the year is out.

And Gramophone’s amusing thirteen-month year has been keeping me busy, leading to my heinous neglect of you, dear reader. Not to mention my first cover story (Nicholas Angelich for International Piano) and a pile of review discs that I can barely see over. Nevertheless, the listening never stops, and I have a number of symphony surveys to write up over the next days and weeks. All of which is complicated – but in a good way – by the arrival late last week, unannounced, of a complete set of Haydn’s symphonies from the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and Dennis Russell Davies. Who knew? Anyway, I’ll naturally be incorporating these new recordings into my surveys. Onwards and upwards!

Symphony No 71 in B flat major is a work that I hadn’t really been particularly aware of hitherto. I’d always known it was there – in between Nos 70 and 72, numerically if not chronologically – but to my shame I hadn’t paid it much attention.

Not that I’m alone in such a heinous lapse. For a start, HC Robbins Landon gives No 71 little more than a cursory mention in the relevant volume of his Chronicle and Works, and even the booklets for most of the (five) CDs containing the work fail to suggest much engagement with it. At least Richard Wigmore devotes a paragraph to it in his wonderful Faber Pocket Guide, noting especially the adventurous harmonic construction of the opening movement’s transitory passages and the rustic wind-band episodes in the finale.

Let’s pay it some attention here. It’s outwardly a typically charming work, and exploration reveals it to be much more than that: in addition to its compelling outer movements there’s a glorious Adagio cast in the form of a set of variations, in which Haydn again distils that characteristic paradox of rapt stasis achieved through continual harmonic and rhythmic movement, while the straightforward tutti of the minuet contrasts with a lopsided trio for solo violins in octaves over a pizzicato accompaniment. It’s this juxtaposition of ‘indoor’ and ‘outdoor’ music that drives the symphony – the refinement of Haydn’s complex approach to sonata form versus the finale’s Feldparthie interruptions, the hymn-like ecstasy of the Adagio blown away by the trio’s blast from the Hungarian puszta.

There are five recordings on my list, and it’s all the usual suspects. We kick off with Antal Dorati – how many times have I typed that this year? – and a particularly gorgeous Adagio, albeit devoid of repeats, making it seem short-winded. His speeds in the outer movements are ideal, only let down by prosaic patches that betray the haste in which these recordings were made.

After a gap of over two decades, Roy Goodman relit No 71’s fire. For me, the symphony’s sublimated outdoor music militates against Goodman’s prominent use of the harpsichord but nevertheless he clatters on, even through the wind-band passages in the finale’s exposition (thankfully not in the corresponding moments in the recap though, where the strings stay silent, and he’s gratifyingly sparing in the trio too). He shapes the opening movement well, although concentration seems to dip and the performance becomes a bit diffuse towards the end, and the Adagio is really too slow. As for the woodwind and horns, they remain the best in the business, so it’s a pity he’s hell-bent on obscuring their contributions.

Christopher Hogwood as ever provides an instructive counterbalance to Goodman’s excess. This is a lighter, brisk approach, where the ear is charmed by some fine wind work (the flute and bassoon in the Adagio) and enervated by the uninvolving ‘house-style’ of the strings. Fast music especially feels curiously ‘blank’ – a criticism it’s impossible to level at Adam Fischer, whose performance impresses with its string richness right from the opening figures of the slow introduction. But some ragged moments and fluffed entries sadly suggest it’s under-prepared. I was left with a strangely ‘disembodied’ feeling, as if the elements of the work were failing to hold together. Need I mention his solo strings in the minuet, spoiling the lovely surprise of the trio?

Finally to Béla Drahos in the Naxos series, whose strings sound distant and ‘bleached-out’. The flute is a shining light in the slow movement but the ensemble falls apart; the minuet is strained and the trio staid. The finale is dull and scrappy, although the wind passages lift matters somewhat. So we’re left with another symphony awaiting a benchmark recording. In the absence of recordings by Harnoncourt or Fey, or groups such as the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra or the Berlin Academy of Ancient Music (who have given some of the finest Haydn performances I’ve heard this year – more anon), Symphony No 71 remains a Cinderella work.