Haydn: Baryton Trios Nos. 1-126 (complete)

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.