Franz Joseph Haydn

The multi-award winning and ever-popular Jean-Efflam Bavouzet is back with Volume 2 of Chandos’ highly acclaimed Haydn Sonata series. This new release follows Bavouzet’s complete Debussy cycle and a number of recent concerto recordings – all of which have been extraordinarily well received by critics and audiences alike, picking up numerous awards along the way.

Many leading pianists have tackled these at times technically challenging classical sonatas by Haydn, but in Bavouzet’s own words, this is a composer who always left the door open for new interpretations:

‘One often forgets how little information Haydn left in the text of his keyboard works: few instructions on nuance and phrasing, and very minimal tempo indications. Playing them is all the more fascinating for that, but it is also arduous and even risky for the performer, who must, even more than usual, create his or her own world and internal logic, only hoping – in the absence of tangible proof – that he or she is not straying too far from the composer’s intentions, forever out of reach.’

For the recording Bavouzet brought in a specially selected Yamaha piano which he feels gives the sort of tonal quality he is looking for, and it shows in the programme for Volume 2 which includes the elegantly virtuosic Sonata in E minor, No. 19; Sonata in B flat major, No. 20; Sonata in G minor, No. 32; Sonata in C major, No. 48, and Sonata in D major, No. 50.

This eighth and final volume of Naxos’s acclaimed survey of Haydn’s Masses contrasts the intimately scaled Little Organ Mass with the symphonically conceived Mass in B flat major, nicknamed Theresienmesse after Marie Therese (wife of Emperor Francis II and soprano soloist in the first performances of The Creation (8557380–81) and The Seasons (8557600–01)). The Great Organ Mass is available on 8572125 as well as in the 8-CD boxed set of the Complete Haydn Masses (8508009): ‘Bravo!’ (Early Music America); ‘…monumental recording… the first-ever collection of the complete Haydn Masses performed on period instruments.’ (Baker & Taylor CD Hotlist)

Amazingly, this CD completes this Haydn project by the Auryn Quartet: 68 quartets, 75 recording days within a period of two years. The ensemble did have many of the Haydn quartets in their repertoire, but certainly not all of them, so this series was quite a challenge. They have every right to be proud of completing such a mammoth task so successfully.

Born in Vienna in April 1902, the cheery-looking Josef Krips seems to have been pre-destined to achieve eminence in the Viennese classics. He recorded with both, the Wiener Philharmoniker and the key London orchestras for Decca in the 1940s, 50s and 60s and the interpretations have genuine expressive power while remaining devoid of exaggeration or affectation.

What could be more enjoyable than spending an hour or two in the company of Haydn, Schubert and Mendelssohn in their sunniest moods, especially when our guide is the amiably expert Viennese conductor Josef Krips? The recordings here take in two London orchestras as well as the Vienna Philharmonic and span nearly ten years (1948-1957). They are especially notable for bringing together all of Krips’s Haydn recordings for Decca. The notes for this issue are by Tully Potter and it forms part of a series of five reissues devoted to the art of Josef Krips.

Recording producers: Erik Smith (Haydn Nos. 94, 99); Victor Olof (Haydn Nos. 92, 104, Schubert, Mendelssohn)

Recording engineers: James Brown (Haydn Nos. 94, No. 99); Kenneth Wilkinson (Haydn Nos. 92, 104, Schubert, Mendelssohn)

Recording locations: Kingsway Hall, London, UK, April 1948 (Schubert), April 1949 (Haydn No. 104), May 1953 (Haydn No. 92), October 1953 (Mendelssohn); Sofiensaal, Vienna, Austria, September 1957 (Haydn Nos. 94, 99)

In 1961, at age 86, Pierre Monteux was appointed chief conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra on a 25-year contract. It was typical of his sense of humour that he chose to sign a contract of such length at this time in his life, but there is no doubt that the brief period he enjoyed with the LSO – he died three years later, in 1964 – was one of the most remarkable Indian summers enjoyed by any conductor.

Here reissued are absolute classics of the recorded oeuvre, in absolutely sublime sound and with a real degree of punch that informed the “Decca” sound of the 1950s-70s. For all the historically-informed, so called ‘authentic’ recordings of Haydn, the Monteux/Wiener Philharmoniker synthesis is one of absolute magic. And deeply felt, expertly paced, are the Brahms Haydn Variations.

Recording producers: John Culshaw (Haydn); James Walker (Brahms)

Recording engineers: James Brown (Haydn); Cyril Windebank (Brahms)

Recording locations: Sofiensaal, Vienna, Austria, April 1959 (Haydn); Kingsway Hall, London, December 1958 (Brahms)

Haydn’s folksong arrangements offer us a subtle mix of nature poetry, dance, and the joys and tribulations of love (with familial hurdles along the way). Perfect in form but rhythmic and rousing too. And paired with them here, two 'classical' trios. Julie Kaufmann finds just the right nuances of expression, both for the hopes and the disappointments of love. Two piano trios which can be regarded as paradigms of this form of composition complete the programme. Whilst the Trio in C is impressive for its carefully balanced developments and transitions, the 'Gipsy' Trio in G features a captivating final rondo “in the gipsies’ style” (from which it takes its name). The piece is songlike and melodic not only in the opening variation movement but also in the slow middle section, which precedes the whirligig finale.

This release marks the Borodin’s third CD for ONYX.

Haydn composed his six string quartets op.33 between 1778 and 1781. He wrote that he had composed them ‘in a new and special way’. This was a rather mischievous claim, as the quartets do not represent a revolutionary compositional advance, rather a shift in style towards intimacy and subtlely from the flamboyant op.20 set of nearly ten years earlier. It was, though, a rather good promotional and sales gimmick on Haydn’s part.

These quartets are the lightest and most humorous in nature of all his mature quartets and do break new ground in having scherzos in place of the old minuet. This new term and the nature of the scherzo would appeal in a few years time to Haydn’s young pupil from Bonn, Ludwig van Beethoven.

Good humour abounds throughout op.33, especially the repeated false ending to the finale of no.2, where Haydn was said to have made a bet with friends that there would be applause at several points before the work ended. The nickname ‘The Joke’ was quickly applied to this work.