Haydn: Piano Sonata No. 1 in G major, Hob.XVI:8

The Hommage to Joseph Haydn consists of six piano pieces composed in 1909, commissioned to celebrate the anniversary of the 100th year of the composer’s death. The six composers are Hahn, Widor, d’Indy, Dukas, Ravel and Debussy. Coupled with five of the Haydn’s most wonderful sonatas, pianist Manfred Wagner-Artzt plays with a full command of the scores and an obvious affection and deep understanding of the music.

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.

It was in Haydn's hands that the keyboard sonata developed from a simple drawing-room divertimento to the level of a high art-form and the greatest among his sonatas have an intellectual rigour and a dramatic sweep that were rarely equalled by Mozart, and not surpassed until Beethoven revolutionized the form in the closing years of the eighteenth century. His earliest sonatas were composed with the harpsichord in mind, but in later years he began increasingly to exploit dynamic contrasts of a kind that could only be obtained on the fortepiano.

It is only comparatively recently that Haydn’s piano sonatas started to feature in recitals, and some of the major pianists of our time have added some of them to their repertoire – Alfred Brendel being perhaps the most illustrious champion of this neglected area of Haydn’s output.

Even with this re-awakening of interest, out of the 60 works concerned, only a handful appear in recital. To compare them with Mozart’s sonatas is as unfair as the often comparison of Schubert’s sonatas with those of Beethoven. Mozart’s sonatas display the cantible of the operatic aria or lied, and have a distinctly ‘south of the Alps’feel to them.

Haydn’s influences come from further north in Berlin and Hamburg. CPE Bach’s sonata’s appeared during the 1740s, and the last appeared in 1787, and the influence of these works was as profound on the young Beethoven as it was on the older Haydn. The first 15 Haydn sonatas date from around 1760, and were probably intended as teaching pieces. Nos.16-19 and 28 belong to a transitional period, Nos.21-27 are sadly lost, and No. 20 and Nos29-62 representing the differing phases of Haydn’s maturity. Of these Nos.48-52 date from 1777-9, and the last three sonatas, Nos 60-62 were composed in London during Haydn’s second UK visit in 1794-5.

All the hallmarks of Haydn can be found in the sonatas, dramatic contrasts between light and dark shadings, sudden pauses and switching between piano and forte – sometimes for drama, often for humour – all foreshadow his unruly and headstrong pupil Ludwig van Beethoven.