Haydn's Haus

[Brian]

I just want to make sure it is known to the Haus that, after the sale of the Hanssler label to more music-minded backers, there is a possibility that Thomas Fey will continue his symphony cycle.

Fey/Heidelberg is currently at 57 symphonies + Sinfonia concertante.

There are talks to finish this cycle, after all!

[Sergeant Rock]

I just want to make sure it is known to the Haus that, after the sale of the Hanssler label to more music-minded backers, there is a possibility that Thomas Fey will continue his symphony cycle.

Worth repeating Kenny's comment:



Woohoo!!

[Gurn Blanston]

I thought, after breaking off a chunk of 1790 last time, that I would be able to wrap it right up for you this week. But no... what a year! What a great lot of happenings. Haydn will never be the same!

An era is over, but its fruit lives on

Check it out!
Thanks,

[Old Listener]

I thought, after breaking off a chunk of 1790 last time, that I would be able to wrap it right up for you this week. But no... what a year! What a great lot of happenings. Haydn will never be the same!

An era is over, but its fruit lives on

A very fine essay.  I have enjoyed the entire series and this one is perhaps my favorite.

[Sergeant Rock]

An era is over, but its fruit lives on

"On October 1st, Haydn left Eszterháza so quickly he left behind many of his important papers and scores. It was like a prison-break![...]From October 1 to December 31, there is yet another whole year's worth of highly important activity to look at. Before we get to it, however..."


ARRRGHHH!!! Cruel, Gurn, cruel. You end on a cliffhanger! I want to know what happens next! Does he run to Maria Anna? 

Did his career at Eszterháza really end so suddenly? Wow, within three days of Nicholas' death, Haydn was gone.

Sarge

[Gurn Blanston]

A very fine essay.  I have enjoyed the entire series and this one is perhaps my favorite.

Thank you very kindly, OL. Tell you the truth, these last 2 have been really enjoyable for me, too. No dearth of events, that's for sure. Not often I actually have to make hard choices about what to leave out!! 

[Gurn Blanston]

"On October 1st, Haydn left Eszterháza so quickly he left behind many of his important papers and scores. It was like a prison-break![...]From October 1 to December 31, there is yet another whole year's worth of highly important activity to look at. Before we get to it, however..."


ARRRGHHH!!! Cruel, Gurn, cruel. You end on a cliffhanger! I want to know what happens next! Does he run to Maria Anna? 

Did his career at Eszterháza really end so suddenly? Wow, within three days of Nicholas' death, Haydn was gone.

Sarge

Hey, Sarge,
Yes, the stark suddenness of it all is stunning in its way. I would have to say that even if he was getting just what he wanted, and let's admit, he wouldn't have been a free man unless Nicholas died, the whole thing must have been crazy at the time.   

[Karl Henning]

"I can't get out of this sparrow-fart town soon enough!"

[Gurn Blanston]

"I can't get out of this sparrow-fart town soon enough!"

I put a phrase in that essay especially for you, Karl. I was hoping you would tumble to it...

[Karl Henning]

I put a phrase in that essay especially for you, Karl. I was hoping you would tumble to it...

Another reason I am keen to visit!  Drinking from the firehose, here . . . .

[Brian]

The next volume of "Haydn 2032" with Il Giardino Armonico will be titled "Solo e pensoso" and feature Symphonies 4, 42, and 64. March 2016.
Volume 4, which should arrive sometime in fall 2016, will center on "Il distratto".

[Gurn Blanston]

The next volume of "Haydn 2032" with Il Giardino Armonico will be titled "Solo e pensoso" and feature Symphonies 4, 42, and 64. March 2016.
Volume 4, which should arrive sometime in fall 2016, will center on "Il distratto".

Yes, they announced #3 a little while ago, I am looking forward to it!  Thanks for the interesting about Vol 4; Il distratto is among my favorites! 

[Mandryka]

"Haydn has really experienced a renaissance in the last few decades," he [Kam] notes. "Until the 1970s and '80s, when performance practice became an issue, the general feeling was there was really no difference between performing Haydn, Beethoven, Brahms or Shostakovich. When you went to hear a great artist perform their music, you got to hear the great artist, regardless of the repertoire."

Haydn, Kam states, really suffered from that approach. Haydn may have composed in the classical style, but his music is firmly rooted in the baroque era. Baroque composers left a lot of room for performers to interpret their music.

"If a computer plays a piece of Mozart, it still sounds like Mozart," he asserts. "But with Haydn, that's not the case. I think Haydn requires artists to give a lot more to bring life to his music than you'll hear in the beautiful [but ultimately] boring recordings from the '60s and earlier. They miss the liveliness that you experience in today's performances of Haydn, which give him his own voice."

From an interview with one of the members of the Jerusalem Quartet. Is this just rubbish?

https://www.sfcv.org/preview/musicmenlo/jerusalem-quartet-mining-bartok-for-melody

[Gurn Blanston]

From an interview with one of the members of the Jerusalem Quartet. Is this just rubbish?

https://www.sfcv.org/preview/musicmenlo/jerusalem-quartet-mining-bartok-for-melody

It may well be rubbish, but I believe it from the core of my being, and have espoused it for years. I know I have been accused of a variety of sins over my preferences for Haydn interpreters, but the biggest issue for me is "historical recordings", which are exactly as described in the interview you published. They may sound very nice, but the miss the essence of Haydn altogether. Where I disagree is where they say that Mozart flies above all that, so to speak. I think Mozart accrues many of the same benefits from original instrument and style performance. No matter the level of a man's genius, he can't imagine what instruments and styles of the future portend, and skew his writing in that direction!

That said, the reason I don't enter into any sort of negative posture when anyone here posts that they listened to this or that Haydn and loved it, is because it is more important to me that they listened to Haydn than who played it. One day they may move on to other interpretive ideas and then we'll talk...

[Jo498]

There are plenty of "lively" Haydn recordings from the mid 20th century (or earlier). I do not think that the most common problem was that Haydn was played "too heavy or boring" with too large orchestras (maybe in many performances but not in the best recordings which is the only thing I can access because I was not alive in the 50s). This was more of a problem with Bach and Handel and would not apply to string quartets anyway. If anything it was that the "light and cheerful" aspect of Haydn's music was stressed in favor of his more "serious" side. (Of course there are also some "over-serious" interpretations, maybe Scherchen's symphonies 44 and 49 or Klemperer in some late symphonies. But these can certainly not be accused of taking Haydn not seriously...)

In any case, in instrumental music the stylistic differences between Haydn (after 1760 or so) and Mozart are smaller than between Haydn and typical 1720s/30s baroque music. This seems fairly obvious to me. I don't know what the current lore on embellishments in Haydn + Mozart vs. baroque is but certainly there cannot be a division between Baroque + Haydn vs. Mozart in that respect.
And I do not remember any "baroque-ish" playing from the two Haydn disc the Jerusalem has recorded. I know that Mandryka finds them "too pretty" and while I don't quite agree with that, I think it would be impossible to claim that they are *less* "pretty" than e.g. the Pro Arte, Budapest or whatever Haydn quartet recordings I have heard from the 30s-50s...

[Mandryka]

It may well be rubbish, but I believe it from the core of my being, and have espoused it for years. I know I have been accused of a variety of sins over my preferences for Haydn interpreters, but the biggest issue for me is "historical recordings", which are exactly as described in the interview you published. They may sound very nice, but the miss the essence of Haydn altogether. Where I disagree is where they say that Mozart flies above all that, so to speak. I think Mozart accrues many of the same benefits from original instrument and style performance. No matter the level of a man's genius, he can't imagine what instruments and styles of the future portend, and skew his writing in that direction!

That said, the reason I don't enter into any sort of negative posture when anyone here posts that they listened to this or that Haydn and loved it, is because it is more important to me that they listened to Haydn than who played it. One day they may move on to other interpretive ideas and then we'll talk...

Yes, it was the thing about the difference between Haydn and Mozart which struck me as the most interesting thing in the quote.

Anyway, as far as historical performance is concerned, even you have let slip once or twice how much you love old some old performances of Haydn (early Juilliard String Quartet, for example.) So surely, as with Bach, there are some performers who could make it into great music even though they weren't HIP.

[Gurn Blanston]

Yes, it was the thing about the difference between Haydn and Mozart which struck me as the most interesting thing in the quote.

Anyway, as far as historical performance is concerned, even you have let slip once or twice how much you love old some old performances of Haydn (early Juilliard String Quartet, for example.) So surely, as with Bach, there are some performers who could make it into great music even though they weren't HIP.

True enough, one of my favorite disks is the VPO/Bernstein 88 & 92, although it was done in 1986, IIRC, and used the modern scores, which is a huge thing.

For me it isn't a case of whether the player can play it well, even though in many cases the things we consider 'beautiful' are things which are foreign to the original music, the entire ambiance brought on by playing from the original score, with all its warts, on instruments which emulate the tonal qualities of the original (with all its warts) is what makes the performance 'right' for me. I remember a discussion here following the release of the Beghin sonatas set where someone wrote that Brendel or Hamelin was more entertaining in this music. My reply now, as it was then, is that they use pianistic devices which hadn't been invented when the music was written, and had been devised during the 19th and 20th centuries for the express purpose of making the music more entertaining. So yes, to modern ears they are more entertaining. But that isn't what I want to hear, I want to hear it how it sounded to the original listeners. Maybe I can (actually, I have) learn to be entertained differently that way. My point is, I don't make a big deal about it unless someone else does first. The music is the most important thing.

[Gurn Blanston]

Seems strange to start a year of music without symphonies, but here is one. I find Haydn still fascinated with his new fortepiano, but it hasn't taken long before he is turning put a masterpiece or two. Here's what I found.

Call it what you will, it's love

Hope you enjoy,
Thanks

[kishnevi]

From an interview with one of the members of the Jerusalem Quartet. Is this just rubbish?

https://www.sfcv.org/preview/musicmenlo/jerusalem-quartet-mining-bartok-for-melody

That's how they play Haydn and Bartok. Or at least, how they played them when I saw them live three nights ago (Thursday). Program was Haydn 77/1, Bartok 5, and Dvorak "American".

Haydn and Bartok were played before intermission, which did make clear not merely how different they were, but how similar they were.  SQ as conversation among friends is as true of Bartok as it is of Haydn.

And the Haydn was no museum piece.  First violinists do not tap their toes and dance in their seats in company with the second violinist in museum pieces (viola and cello were not quite as exuberant).

They are releasing a recording of at least some of the Bartok quartets ( the program note was rather vague) in " early winter",  and will be performing in London.  Their website gives the dates.  I think you will want to see them.  (So would Gurn, but I don't know if they ever turn up in his neck of the woods.)

[Pat B]

In any case, in instrumental music the stylistic differences between Haydn (after 1760 or so) and Mozart are smaller than between Haydn and typical 1720s/30s baroque music. This seems fairly obvious to me. I don't know what the current lore on embellishments in Haydn + Mozart vs. baroque is but certainly there cannot be a division between Baroque + Haydn vs. Mozart in that respect.
And I do not remember any "baroque-ish" playing from the two Haydn disc the Jerusalem has recorded. I know that Mandryka finds them "too pretty" and while I don't quite agree with that, I think it would be impossible to claim that they are *less* "pretty" than e.g. the Pro Arte, Budapest or whatever Haydn quartet recordings I have heard from the 30s-50s...

I may be out of my league here (I haven't even heard the Jerusalem recordings) but I read that quote, particularly the part about a computer playing, as referring to things like accents and agogics more than ornaments. Regardless I don't see why we should assume that any stylistic or formal similarity between Mozart's and Haydn's compositions implies that they must necessarily be performed similarly.