Haydn: Piano Sonata No. 16 in D major, Hob.XVI:14

The multi-award-winning pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet continues his great survey of Haydn’s piano sonatas. This is Volume 3 in a series, of which The Times wrote: ‘Who is the best composer for refreshing the spirit and making you laugh? Haydn, of course, especially when in the hands of a pianist like Bavouzet, another master of delight.’

In the words of Bavouzet himself: ‘Each volume of this ambitious, extended project will arrive over the years like a postcard, dispatched during my travels with scant respect for chronological considerations, but undertaken with the greatest passion for trying to convey as vividly as possible to twenty-first-century ears the boundless treasures of this sublime music.’ He also notes: ‘We often forget how little information Haydn left us in the scores of his keyboard works: few indications of nuance or of phrasing, and the briefest guides to tempo. This task is never anything other than absolutely fascinating, but for the performer it is also testing, and even risky. He must, even more than usual, create his own world, his own logic, left only to hope that, in the absence of tangible evidence, he will not distance himself too far from the composer’s intentions, which remain forever unknowable.’

For the recording of this series, Bavouzet brought in a specially selected Yamaha piano which he feels gives the sort of tonal quality he is looking for, and once again this shows in a programme, which here presents the large-scale Sonata in C minor alongside sonatas of a lighter and sunnier character.

2009 was the bicentenary of the death of Joseph Haydn, and to commemorate this anniversary Tall Poppies and fortepianist Geoffrey Lancaster are journeying through Haydn’s complete keyboard sonatas. Lancaster has performed the complete sonatas in concert series in Melbourne and Canberra, and has been recording the works using period instruments from the unique collection of early keyboards at the Australian National University School of Music, where Dr Lancaster is Head of Keyboards. As a master of the fortepiano, his historically informed performances bring clarity, originality and insightful musical understanding to these works, the fortepiano responding with gusto to the drama and emotion in the music. Tall Poppies is proud that the covers for this series feature paintings by Australia’s great painter, Fred Williams (with kind permission of Lyn Williams), giving this series a uniquely Australian flavour. The initial CDs have been generously supported by the Friends of the ANU School of Music.

This programme, recorded in May 2009, spans the Baroque and Classical periods and features suites and sonatas by three of the supreme composers who celebrate significant anniversaries in 2009: Purcell, Haydn and Handel.

In Trevor Pinnock’s words: “Initially the idea of marrying these three composers seemed crazy. But then I realised the connections. How much Handel was influenced by Purcell, incorporating Purcellian progressions in his music. And how much Haydn had been influenced by Handel. I saw the link from Purcell’s choral music to Handel’s oratorios, which in turn inspired Haydn to produce ‘The Creation’ and ‘The Seasons’. But what tipped the balance for me was that story of Haydn, when in London, accompanying a song on the pianoforte by Purcell, and saying proudly that he did it all by himself. I found it fascinating that he’d actually touched music by Purcell in 1790 - and that he’d found it very difficult. As a musician, I could feel for him”

“Once in a while a reviewer receives a record that strikes him as being so exactly right that, without switching off his critical faculties, he finds himself just sitting back and enjoying it. In an ideal world this would doubtless always be so; but I must thank Trevor Pinnock … for this particular contribution to my personal Utopia” Gramophone Magazine

Olbertz’s recordings of all Haydn’s Piano Sonatas enable the development of one of the most important “avant-garde composers” of Viennese Classicism to be followed in an exemplary way. The almost fifty works abound in surprises, and Olbertz interprets them with great clarity, elegance and esprit.