Haydn: Die Feuersbrunst oder das abgebrannte Haus Marionetten, Hob.XXIXb:A

In honour of Haydn’s bicentenary CPO are delighted to present a rarely recorded work; Haydn’s two act singspiel Die Feuersbrunst oder das abgebrannte Haus (The Conflagration or The Burned House).

Between the years of 1773 and 1779 Haydn was musical director at the court of Nikolaus Esterházy. In the summer months the Prince moved to his palace in Esterházy (now in Hungary) and commissioned Haydn to write puppet operas to entertain himself, his family and his servants.

Die Feuersbrunst was a popular singspiel due to the comic nature of the plot, rumoured to have been written for the servants, maid and coachman at the court. It adheres to the same principles that Mozart would later adopt in The Magic Flute which made both works popular.

This exciting new release is authentically performed on period instruments by Capella Augustina and conducted by its conductor and founder Andreas Spering. Together they specialize in historical performance practice and their major focuses are on Baroque opera and oratorio from the Viennese Classical School.

“Andreas Spering directs effectively and draws precise playing from his orchestra” Gramophone on a previous release by Capella Augustina and Andreas Spering

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.