Franz Joseph Haydn

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.

Performing on early 19th-century pianos from the Frederick Historic Piano Collection, competition prizewinners Dmitry Rachmanov, a Juilliard graduate, and Cullan Bryant, a graduate of Manhattan School of Music, explore the interrelationships between the keyboard music of Beethoven and his principal teachers in this fascinating double-album of rarities for piano four-hands.

A thoroughly enjoyable chamber music release featuring Haydn’s Trios for piano, flute and violin-cello. This release shows fully that Haydn was a composer that could create dramatic excitement and colourful contrasts from almost every conceivable combination of instruments. This disc is part of Coviello’s authentic performance series.

A new recording featuring one of the most famous and best-loved of all early-music sopranos, Emma Kirkby.

Marcia Hadjimarkos performs on a superb modern copy of a Walther fortepiano,

Booklet note and full sung texts.

This CD contains the remarkable cantata Arianna a Naxos Haydn composed in 1789. Unlike the later cantata Berenice composed in London in 1795, Arianne is not scored for orchestra. Here the piano is given a virtuoso role especially in the recitatives. The drama of Arianna’s desertion by Theseus is superbly realised by Haydn.

In September 1800, Lord Nelson, fresh from his victory over the French in the Battle of the Nile in 1797, visited Eisenstadt, together with Lord and Lady Hamilton. Lady Hamilton asked to sing Arianne during her visit. A member of the British party at Eisenstadt, Cornelia White asked Haydn to set words she had written celebrating Nelson’s famous victory. He obliged with the cantata ‘Lines from the Battle of the Nile’, and work was performed by Emma Hamilton with Haydn at the piano.

The songs on this CD all resulted from a dinner in Vienna on December 1790. Haydn, Mozart and the violinist and impresario Salomon were discussing Haydn’s trip to London. It was on this trip that Haydn became friendly with Anne Hunter, a talented poet, and wife of the eminent surgeon John Hunter. She was a friend of Walpole, and soon Haydn was in the ‘polite society’ of London. Anne either supplied the text, or selected texts by other writers, especially Shakespeare. This was a happy time in Haydn’s life, and the songs are heartfelt, and emotional, foreshadowing the romanticism of Schubert, and reflecting possibly the romantic attachments the composer had made in London.

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.

Most often performed in an arrangement for string quartet, this recording of Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross is a unique proposition – offering Haydn’s original instrumental meditations alongside their choral counterparts.

Vladimir Jurowski writes ‘I felt it was important to hear the music first in its original shape, and then what it has become…the words are no longer the central focus, but a variation, another layer of pre-existing material.’

This series of seven Easter meditations includes some of Haydn’s most intense and inventive music, evoking the struggle of Christ’s final hours and the solemnity of the church’s Holy Week services.

Recorded live in 2009, the reduced string forces of the London Philharmonic Orchestra combine really well with a lovely sense of ensemble.

‘…a performance of real integrity, Vladimir Jurowski pacing perfectly this predominantly slow, often gravely beautiful music, the use of non-vibrato strings adding a terse, authentic edge.’ Classical Source on The Seven Last Words at London’s Royal Festival Hall, 2009