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A rare combination, violin and viola, but one that challenges the genius of Haydn: his sonatas for this duo are treasures of invention and wit in perfect Viennese style.

Haydn probably wrote these sonatas during his residency at the Esterhazy court, for the Kapellmeister of the orchestra, Luigi Tomasini, apparently a virtuoso on his instrument, judging from the demanding violin part, the viola supplying the necessary harmonic funding.

Played by two of Italy’s best known violinists in the field of early music: Federico Guglielmo (with numerous recordings under his name, solo and with his ensemble Arte del’Arco) and Massimo Piva, first violist of Europa Galante.

Joseph Haydn was a national treasure in his native Austria. Excelling in all areas of composition, he was the ‘Father of the Symphony’, the author of such renowned vocal works such as The Creation, and a pioneer of the string quartet. He was also a vital mentor to the young Mozart. These unique works – the only ones for violin and viola in Haydn’s oeuvre – are thought to have been written in the late 1760s or early 1770s, the period during which the composer was employed at the Esterházy court. Little is known about the circumstances of their composition, but most of Haydn’s works for violin at this time were intended for the leader of the court chapel, Luigi Tomasini. The pieces certainly tend towards being solo compositions for the violin, which is accorded the bulk of the melodic interest, with an obbligato viola part providing the harmonic support. Accalimed violinist Federico Guglielmo studied at the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello in Venice, later specialising in Baroque and Classical violin repertoire, and has won prizes in numerous international competitions. In this recording he plays alongside Massimo Piva, a past principal violist of Europa Galante and the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto.

What is a Baryton, and why did Haydn write so extensively for it? Two reasonable questions, and actually quite easy to answer.

The baryton is a member of the gamba family and a relation to the modern-day cello dating from the early 17th century. It was quite a handful to play, having one manual with 6 or 7 bowed gut strings, and another with anything up to 20 further ‘sympathetically resonating’ metal strings lying under the finger board.

Haydn’s prolific output for this instrument was the result of his patron – Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy I. The Prince was himself a skilful musician and the Baryton was his instrument of choice. With an insatiable appetite for new compositions for the instrument, the Prince commissioned 160 works from Haydn. Today 90% of these still survive, the 126 trios dating from 1762–1775 being the most important.

The remarkable fact is that many of these trios resemble the greater piano trios – proof that Haydn lavished as much care on these ‘private’ works as he did on his published works. The Octets featuring the Baryton include some virtuoso writing for wind, and the horns often reach stratospheric heights – a tribute to the virtuosity of the Esterhazy players Haydn had at his disposal.

A must for all period performance and Haydn fans

The most comprehensive and only survey of Haydn’s output for baryton on record, newly recorded: most works here receiving world premiere recordings

Extensive booklet notes

Recorded in Eisenstadt, where Haydn was Kapellmeister for Prince Nikolaus

‘The musicians proved to be virtuosos on their instruments’ Schwaebische Zeitung, Leutkirch

‘The concert of the Esterhazy Ensemble was exceptional.’ Fuldaer Zeitung

The supreme, voluptuary realist of French painting, Jean Ingres, exclaimed that Haydn was music’s alpha and omega: ‘Whoever studies music, let his daily bread be Haydn…the first who created everything, discovered everything, taught everything to the rest!’ While an intervening century or two of musicology might tell us that if Haydn was father to the symphony and string quartet, there were some interesting midwives among his contemporaries, Haydn’s sheer industry remains unequalled; but so too his creative facility and fertility in returning to the well time and time again, and never returning empty. In this first volume of Brilliant Classics’s survey of Haydn’s music, issued to mark the 200th anniversary of his death in 1809, are many of his most famous works: all 104 symphonies, his two oratorios of imperishable power and beauty, The Creation and The Seasons, as well as another with much no less striking music, The Return of Tobit. There are several of the operas he wrote for the court at Eszterhaza, where he was more or less a servant-prisoner for most of his adult life, and – a first on disc – a complete recording of the 126 trios written at the behest of the court’s prince for an obsolete string instrument, the baryton, in which the prince had himself attained a modest accomplishment. Most of the string quartets are here too, in recordings made especially for Brilliant by the Buchberger Quartet, and historically informed interpretations of the complete piano sonatas on instruments of Haydn’s day. This is a significant contribution to the anniversary of one of the great composers, with much new material, and at an unbeatable price.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Bonus CD-ROM contains song texts and a specially commissioned essay exploring Haydn’s music, genre by genre, by the renowned Haydn authority, Richard Wigmore New recordings of bayton fios and other chamber works made especially for this set and not previously released.

18 CD + 1 CD-ROM

First complete recording of all 429 songs, and a major contribution to Haydn’s bicentenary year 2009.

All the releases in this set were well reviewed.

‘Lorna Anderson and Jamie MacDougall are the ideal singers, both with a healthy, natural resonance, intelligent relish for the texts and unfailingly reliable intonation.’ Gramophone.

‘In the vigorous songs he (MacDougall) is excellent…Equally consistent is the standard of performance. The singers ideally suited to their tasks, the instrumentalists unfailingly lively and stylish in their playing.’ Gramophone

CD-ROM containing a comprehensive and scholarly essay, plus sung texts to all songs.

Booklet with index to the 18 CDs and all 429 songs.

This box set brings together for the first time all Haydn’s Scottish and Welsh folksong settings – a grand total of 429 songs.

Why, at the age of 67, did the most famous composer in the world undertake repeated commissions from publishers to produce such a remarkable number of songs? One reason is the rather lucrative fee paid per song, the second reason is that Haydn had a genuine affection for Britain and the British that had started with his first visit to the country in 1791–2. He had made many friends and business acquaintances, not least the publishers Napier, Thomson and Whyte who were the driving forces behind these songs.

Described by Sir Roger Norrington as the wittiest of all the great composers, in these songs Haydn allows ample opportunity for his humour and wit to shine through. Remarkably, Haydn received only the melody of the songs by the publishers, not the words – something that HC Robbins Landon described ‘an arrangement that would seem insane to any modern folk song arranger schooled in the methods of Bartók and Kodály’. Nonetheless Haydn rose to the challenge admirably, and apparently enjoyed the task. Each song is a gem, and many of them containing first-class melodies which Haydn no doubt found attractive and inspirational.

New recording from February 2008, made on period instruments.

L’Arte dell’Arco was established in 1994, and quickly established itself as one of the major baroque ensembles performing with Cecilia Bartoli, Pieter Wispelwey and Christopher Hogwood.

They have recorded for CPO, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi and Brilliant Classics.

The piano trios and string quartets dominate Joseph Haydn’s chamber music output. However, there is a sizeable body of work that falls outside this forms. The concertini and divertimenti all date from early in his career, and from the Morzin period, 1757-60. The piano dominates the scene, and the strings generally have to be content with routine accompanying roles. In some respects these are keyboard sonatas with string accompaniments. The divertimenti do provide the violin with more opportunities to partner up as an equal to the keyboard. They were probably composed as ‘Tafelmusik’ or for Prince Morzin’s family and friends to play along to.

As is typical of Haydn, he lavished as much care on these works as he did on his symphonies, concertos and masses. There are some wonderful moments in these works, and they should not be dismissed as second class Haydn – such a thing just does not exist.

Unlike Mozart, Haydn for some reason failed to realise the potential of the new pianoforte as a concertante instrument, and his concertos for keyboard (some spurious) tend to focus on the organ or harpsichord.

The three works on this CD are all authentic Haydn. The 4th concerto was composed in 1770 for the blind pianist Maria Theresa Paradis, for whom Mozart and Salieri also composed piano concertos.

The 3rd concerto dates from 1771, and has an especially beautiful slow movement. The D major concerto No.11 is a masterpiece and dates from 1780. It is much nearer to Mozart’s concertos of this date, and some have gone as far as to label it Haydn’s ‘only’ piano concerto. It is a big work, again with a wonderful slow movement following an impressive opening movement. It is however the finale ‘Rondo all’Ungarese’ that has made it one of Haydn’s most famous and best loved works.

This useful set gathers up the many shorter works that Haydn wrote for the keyboard: many minuets of light character and charming temperament and variation sets of great melodic invention. He arranged many movements from his chamber and orchestral works, doubtless encouraged by his fame and his publisher to bring his music to even greater domestic popularity in a world where live music was far more often heard on the piano at home than in great concert halls. Finally, there is his great cycle of Seven Last Words: seven poignant slow movements with an introduction and final ‘Earthquake’ originally commissioned for choir and orchestra for Lisbon Cathedral, but which quickly achieved a reputation for their sober beauty out of proportion to the specific conditions of their context: hence this arrangement made by another party. Bart van Oort is a scholar-performer who has extensively researched and performed the music of Haydn and his time (including contributions made to Brilliant Classics’ complete set of the composer’s piano sonatas). Here he performs on a fine modern reproduction of a fortepiano by Walter, a maker esteemed by Haydn and Beethoven.

It is only comparatively recently that Haydn’s piano sonatas started to feature in recitals, and some of the major pianists of our time have added some of them to their repertoire – Alfred Brendel being perhaps the most illustrious champion of this neglected area of Haydn’s output.

Even with this re-awakening of interest, out of the 60 works concerned, only a handful appear in recital. To compare them with Mozart’s sonatas is as unfair as the often comparison of Schubert’s sonatas with those of Beethoven. Mozart’s sonatas display the cantible of the operatic aria or lied, and have a distinctly ‘south of the Alps’feel to them.

Haydn’s influences come from further north in Berlin and Hamburg. CPE Bach’s sonata’s appeared during the 1740s, and the last appeared in 1787, and the influence of these works was as profound on the young Beethoven as it was on the older Haydn. The first 15 Haydn sonatas date from around 1760, and were probably intended as teaching pieces. Nos.16-19 and 28 belong to a transitional period, Nos.21-27 are sadly lost, and No. 20 and Nos29-62 representing the differing phases of Haydn’s maturity. Of these Nos.48-52 date from 1777-9, and the last three sonatas, Nos 60-62 were composed in London during Haydn’s second UK visit in 1794-5.

All the hallmarks of Haydn can be found in the sonatas, dramatic contrasts between light and dark shadings, sudden pauses and switching between piano and forte – sometimes for drama, often for humour – all foreshadow his unruly and headstrong pupil Ludwig van Beethoven.