Haydn: Fantasia (Capriccio) in C major, Hob. XVII:4

Backhaus won the Anton Rubinstein Competition in Paris in 1905. As a young man, until about 1932, Backhaus also played a lot of Chopin, Liszt, Moszkowski and Godowsky - works for virtuosos. The recently released first recording of him performing the Chopin Etudes op. 10 and op. 25 in 1928 earned the PROFIL Edition Günter Hänssler label a good deal of praise.

The Marianne referred to in the title of this CD is Maria Anna von Genzinger, with whom Haydn had an intense correspondence. She was 19 years his junior and was the wife of a famous doctor and was a talented musician. It is believed that the two met in Vienna at Marianne’s musical salon. The Sonata in E flat on this CD is dedicated to Maria Anna von Genzinger.

After the great success of his recordings of Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Medtner Piano Concertos, Yevgeny Sudbin now presents a disc of solo works by Haydn. As Sudbin writes in his liner notes, one of the qualities in this composer which he finds particularly endearing is Haydn’s ‘delight in silliness, outrageous wit and the breaking of all conventions’. The works chosen for this recital are by no means mere light-weight ‘musical jokes’, however; for instance they include the profoundly beautiful Andante con variazioni in F minor, which some have suggested was written in response to the death of Mozart In an affectionate tribute to the composer, Sudbin ends his recital with Larking with Haydn, his own tongue-in-cheek arrangement of the Finale of the Lark Quartet.

The release in 2005 of Yevgeny Sudbin’s first disc, a selection of Scarlatti sonatas, caused a sensation. A number of reviewers compared it favourably to the legendary recordings by Horowitz in the same repertoire, and on the BBC Radio 3 CD Review, the result was described as follows: ‘It's as if he's dragged Scarlatti off a dusty museum shelf and brought him out into the sunshine where both he and the music are happily basking.’

2 discs for the price of 1.

Marc-André Hamelin’s first set of Haydn Piano Sonatas was Hyperion’s best-selling release of 2007, and had the critics jostling to acclaim his performances in the highest terms, in particular his expression of the ‘physical exhilaration of Haydn’s playful inspiration in a way unmatched by any pianist past or present’. His second volume, released in a year where new Haydn recordings are prominent, should surely match the critical and commercial success of the first.

Some of Haydn’s most alluring and appealing keyboard works are recorded here. The surprising (to some) emotional range of the composer is fully evident in the extraordinarily sensitive and intimate Sonata in E flat major No 49, written for Maria Anna von Genzinger, and the profoundly felt Andante con variazioni in F minor, the composition of which coincided with her death.