Haydn's Haus

[Karl Henning]

I hope you can find a place that's just what you want. I bought a piece of farmland when I was 35 and spent the next 20 years paying for it. Now, I really want to spend time looking at what it has to offer. Nature photography is another interest which is easily fulfilled when living in the country! 

Indeed; Skoal! Prosit!

Huzzah!

[Gurn Blanston]

Volume 8 of Haydn 2032 will have the most eclectic coupling yet:

Haydn 43 "Mercury"
Haydn 28
Haydn 63 "Roxolana" (sic?) La Roxelane
Bartók Romanian Folk Dances

Well, isn't THAT interesting!?  I can happily look forward to it. Although right now I am more looking forward to Vol 6. Man, these guys are slow....

[Gurn Blanston]

Huzzah!

Kinda what I was thinking...

[Brian]

Man, these guys are slow....

I know! I'm starting to think it might take them 14 more years

That misspelling was in the original email, by the way. Some Haydn experts they are!

[Gurn Blanston]

I know! I'm starting to think it might take them 14 more years

That misspelling was in the original email, by the way. Some Haydn experts they are!

Yeah, I got that email, it was all in German, so I figured maybe they spelled it that way in German?!?!?

I have to say, it might take them more than that at this pace. Sure like the first five though! 

[Daverz]

Volume 8 of Haydn 2032 will have the most eclectic coupling yet:

Haydn 43 "Mercury"
Haydn 28
Haydn 63 "Roxolana" (sic?)
Bartók Romanian Folk Dances

Did they really run out of other 18th Century symphonies to record?  No more Kraus, Vanhal, Rosetti, Boccherini?

[Baron Scarpia]

Seriously, 2032? Since they have been so obliging to give us the date, 14 years from now, when the set of recordings will be finished, maybe they can provide us the date when the project will be canceled. 

[Gurn Blanston]

Did they really run out of other 18th Century symphonies to record?  No more Kraus, Vanhal, Rosetti, Boccherini?

There is a museum in Vienna that has a collection of original scores from the 17th century forward. Forgive my German, it is like Gesselschaft der Musikfreunde or sommat such. And they reputedly have over 10,000 symphonies dating from between 1750 and 1800... Well, I like Bartók, and those original dances probably date from this period too. I'm hoping for the best.

[Gurn Blanston]

Seriously, 2032? Since they have been so obliging to give us the date, 14 years from now, when the set of recordings will be finished, maybe they can provide us the date when the project will be canceled. 

Heaven forfend. I have promised myself I will get the final volume as an 80th birthday present for myself.

[Florestan]

There is a museum in Vienna that has a collection of original scores from the 17th century forward. Forgive my German, it is like Gesselschaft der Musikfreunde or sommat such. And they reputedly have over 10,000 symphonies dating from between 1750 and 1800...

Speaking of which, this is a real gem:



Unsurprisingly, the best of the lot is Dittersdorff's A major, featuring one of the wittiest Rondos I've ever heard.

[Daverz]

For no particular reason I'm reminded that Max Goberman's Haydn recordings are on Tidal and Spotify

https://tidal.com/artist/3541377
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2lX3Xa8sYCpxoysABBQ87i

This is going to be a fun collection to dip into.

[Gurn Blanston]

Speaking of which, this is a real gem:



Unsurprisingly, the best of the lot is Dittersdorff's A major, featuring one of the wittiest Rondos I've ever heard.

Cool, that looks interesting! The monasteries are treasure troves of music. There are many Haydn works which we wouldn't know today if not for the monks.  I'll have to find that...

[Gurn Blanston]

I've noticed that when I get to the biggest, best-known works, that's the time I tend to struggle getting it out. Not that I have writer's block, it's more like trying to write something that hasn't been written a thousand times before.

So this time we will look at a motet which achieved sainthood so to speak, and then at what is possibly the last great set of minuets written in the 18th century. And then, the Op. 76 quartets.....

Hope you enjoy, I learned some new things, maybe you will too.

...they are full of invention, fire, good taste, and new effects

Thanks,

[George]

Working through this set for the second time. I'm now up to the penultimate disc. Gorgeous, playful playing here. Still upset about the clicks/pops heard throughout.

[Daverz]

Working through this set for the second time. I'm now up to the penultimate disc. Gorgeous, playful playing here. Still upset about the clicks/pops heard throughout.

Clicks and pops!  I wonder if these could be inter-sample overs:

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/tagged/inter-sample-overs

[George]

Clicks and pops!  I wonder if these could be inter-sample overs:

https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/application_notes/tagged/inter-sample-overs

I honestly don't know, but they are annoying. They occur frequently throughout the entire 9CD set. 

I emailed the company twice about it and they never got back to me.

[Daverz]

I honestly don't know, but they are annoying. They occur frequently throughout the entire 9CD set. 

I emailed the company twice about it and they never got back to me.

I'm listening to it on Tidal now.  Unfortunately the track order is a complete fustercluck. 

...What I sampled was wonderful, and I couldn't resist the Zoverstocks price.  Hopefully, there will be no clicks and pops.

[Mookalafalas]

I visited my folks last month. They are in an old folks home.  I had lunch with them, and the other person at their table was a prickly old fellow, apparently in the last stages of a muscle destroying illness.  My folks told him I love classical music, and had just seen several classical concerts in Chicago. He asked me what I had seen, and I told him "Debussy, LvB, Orff, and Tchaikovsky." He said, "Well, none of that is classical music." 
  Turns out he is crazy about Mozart and Haydn, but mainly Haydn, and plays him all day.  I asked him what conductors he likes for Haydn, and he said "depends on the symphony--for example, for 94 the best is Van Beinum."
  I was pretty skeptical. He'd never heard Bruggen or Hogwood.

Anyway, I'm playing the Haydn disk of this series.


Wouldn't surprise me if he was right.  This is terrific. Airy and sometimes fleet, yet unrushed, with nice backbone. Playing is gorgeous and sensitive. For 1950ish, sound is unbelievable.  Is Scribendum always this good?
  Anyway, playing it reminded me of this thread.  Bit quiet over here!

[Edit: just read some about it. Turns out it was recorded by Philips, and Scribendum is a British company that licensed the music for rerelease]
 

[Gurn Blanston]

I visited my folks last month. They are in an old folks home.  I had lunch with them, and the other person at their table was a prickly old fellow, apparently in the last stages of a muscle destroying illness.  My folks told him I love classical music, and had just seen several classical concerts in Chicago. He asked me what I had seen, and I told him "Debussy, LvB, Orff, and Tchaikovsky." He said, "Well, none of that is classical music." 
  Turns out he is crazy about Mozart and Haydn, but mainly Haydn, and plays him all day.  I asked him what conductors he likes for Haydn, and he said "depends on the symphony--for example, for 94 the best is Van Beinum."
  I was pretty skeptical. He'd never heard Bruggen or Hogwood.

Anyway, I'm playing the Haydn disk of this series.


Wouldn't surprise me if he was right.  This is terrific. Airy and sometimes fleet, yet unrushed, with nice backbone. Playing is gorgeous and sensitive. For 1950ish, sound is unbelievable.  Is Scribendum always this good?
  Anyway, playing it reminded me of this thread.  Bit quiet over here!

[Edit: just read some about it. Turns out it was recorded by Philips, and Scribendum is a British company that licensed the music for rerelease]

Well, he's right of course, but you knew that. Classic Era can be stretched to encompass Beethoven (big debate, not for here), but you gotta love a purist. My kind of guy!

There were some fine recordings in that era, as you see. Some of the issues that 'modern purists' would complain about is that they didn't have reliable scores to work from, only heavily edited scores from earlier times which had a lot of Haydn's own abrasiveness and dissonance removed, on the premise that "he certainly mustn't have meant that, must be a mistake. He's Papa Haydn..."  And don't want to wear out the audience with repeats, they'll never know the difference. There were also quite some few who played Haydn like he was Tchaikovsky. Of course, they did the same to Mozart.  My own distaste for historic recordings usually has nothing at all to do with the musicians, who were normally quite as fine as any today. It is more what they inherited from the time leading up to them.

That said, anyone who listens to Haydn in any form comes away from it better off for the experience.

[Gurn Blanston]

Sometimes, when you don't have a specific piece of music you want to write about, it is a bit harder to sum up the facts you DO wish to make known. And so it was in this essay. I learned a lot more than I was able to share with you here, but I hope and wish you will enjoy this 5th anniversary essay. 1797 draws to a close, another major milestone year in Haydn's life.

Haydn, brought to you by...

Thanks!