Haydn's Haus

[Florestan]

Florestan, I say underrated because as I stated in my first post that a lot of these so-called experts do not consider him in the top 10 list of greatest composers in history. One so-called expert is Antony Tommasini, NY Times classical music critic. His list puts Debussy, Stravinski, Bartok and even Shulbert above Haydn. Interesting that he doesn't even include Handel and Vivaldi in the top 10 list. This is the link to his article: http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/02/02/classical-tommasini

Carlito, when it comes to enjoying the music we love who needs, or care about, experts? I certainly don't. My top 10 list includes both Haydn and Schubert and no expert will ever change it. The fact that somebody, somewhere (be it even the NYT classical music critic) has a different list which excludes both composers doesn't bother or affect me in the least, nor does it detract a iota from my enjoying their music --- I love what I love, they love what they love and the Earth is large enough for all of us to live happily everafter. Besides, there are experts and experts: there are those who write about music, like your Tommasini* (of whom I had never heard before reading your post) and there are those who make music, like, say, Hogwood or Dorati or Rudolf Buchbinder or the Buchberger Quartet or the Beaux-Arts Trio. The wisest thing to do is stick to the latter and forget about the former (who on the historical time scale are already forgotten anyway...)

* which, btw, is perfectly entitled to his opinion, just as we are to ours.

[Florestan]

Of course, we can play the 'cup half full/empty game' forever. 

It's not that much a question of "half full / half empty cup" but of historical perspective and sense of proportion.

The 19th-century detractors of Haydn are long since dead and buried. Most of them are also completely forgotten. Today Haydn is once again one of the most popular composers among performers and audiences alike. There is no dearth of good / excellent recordings of Haydn's works and --- best thing of all --- they are just one click and a pittance (if any at all) away. There have never been, Haydn's own times included, more and better opportunities to hear his music in top performances than today --- heck, one doesn't even have to get outside one's home for that.

Yet it seems that this situation is somehow not completely satisfactory to you because in eighteen-something somebody somewhere trashed Haydn!... Get over it, man, this is 2016 AD, fer Chrissake! Who cares about that anymore, except you? 

[Gurn Blanston]

It's not that much a question of "half full / half empty cup" but of historical perspective and sense of proportion.

The 19th-century detractors of Haydn are long since dead and buried. Most of them are also completely forgotten. Today Haydn is once again one of the most popular composers among performers and audiences alike. There is no dearth of good / excellent recordings of Haydn's works and --- best thing of all --- they are just one click and a pittance (if any at all) away. There have never been, Haydn's own times included, more and better opportunities to hear his music in top performances than today --- heck, one doesn't even have to get outside one's home for that.

Yet it seems that this situation is somehow not completely satisfactory to you because in eighteen-something somebody somewhere trashed Haydn!... Get over it, man, this is 2016 AD, fer Chrissake! Who cares about that anymore, except you? 

Oh, I doubt it is just me. No matter.

[Scion7]

Haydn was, is, and will always be in the top pantheon of Classical music.
Even if one wished to, extracting and ejecting him would be like removing the aorta - the patient would quickly die.

[Gurn Blanston]

Haydn was, is, and will always be in the top pantheon of Classical music.
Even if one wished to, extracting and ejecting him would be like removing the aorta - the patient would quickly die.

And don't let Florestan tell you otherwise... 

(please, it was just a joke!)

[Scion7]

And don't let Florestan tell you otherwise...

He's only still around because he hasn't yet crossed the Borgo Pass ... after dark ...

         

[Florestan]

He's only still around because he hasn't yet crossed the Borgo Pass ... after dark ...

I am a fellow countryman of Vlad the Impaler and I had read all of Poe's stories before I turned 18, so your "Borgo Pass after dark" is as frightening to me as a stroll in the Central Park at noon. 

[Scion7]

Vlad Tepes was a Wallachian (Romanian) - I am talking about Stoker's Székely character (which makes him Hungarian).
So bring your Vlach self into my domain - I will toss you in with my Slovak henchmen to do my bidding ... heh ... heh ... heh

<grinning bat emoticon> <dancing Székely emoticon> <really bad dude emoticon>

"central park at noon" - don't go to Manhattan!   

[Florestan]

Vlad Tepes was a Wallachian (Romanian) - I am talking about Stoker's Székely character (which makes him Hungarian).
So bring your Vlach self into my domain - I will toss you in with my Slovak henchmen to do my bidding ... heh ... heh ... heh

Just go tell a Szekely he is a Hungarian --- and be prepared to seek and find sweet asylum in Wallachia... 

[Scion7]

Just go tell a Szekely he is a Hungarian --- and be prepared to seek and find sweet asylum in Wallachia... 

My lady is a Hungarian nurse - she has origins in Szekely-land - they speak Hungarian there.  It's got a different accent, of course - Arpad left a rear-guard in the mountains as he moved forward on his errand of destruction.

Anyway, Stoker was Irish - he got things all mixed up.     Based on Dracula's speech, it's impossible to really say who he was!

"We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland the fighting spirit which Thor and Wodin gave them, which their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of Europe, aye, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the werewolves themselves had come. Here, too, when they came, they found the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches, who, expelled from Scythia had mated with the devils in the desert. Fools, fools! What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?" He held up his arms. "Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race, that we were proud, that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back? Is it strange that when Arpad and his legions swept through the Hungarian fatherland he found us here when he reached the frontier, that the Honfoglalas was completed there? And when the Hungarian flood swept eastward, the Szekelys were claimed as kindred by the victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkeyland. Aye, and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for as the Turks say, 'water sleeps, and the enemy is sleepless.' Who more gladly than we throughout the Four Nations received the 'bloody sword,' or at its warlike call flocked quicker to the standard of the King? When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent? Who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery on them! Was it not this Dracula, indeed, who inspired that other of his race who in a later age again and again brought his forces over the great river into Turkeyland, who, when he was beaten back, came again, and again, though he had to come alone from the bloody field where his troops were being slaughtered, since he knew that he alone could ultimately triumph! They said that he thought only of himself. Bah! What good are peasants without a leader? Where ends the war without a brain and heart to conduct it? Again, when, after the battle of Mohacs, we threw off the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free. Ah, young sir, the Szekelys, and the Dracula as their heart's blood, their brains, and their swords, can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach. The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace, and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told."

Gurn: (quietly) Doesn't anyone want to talk about Haydn?

[Florestan]

Stoker was Irish - he got things all mixed up.   

Truth is, he was as clueless as it got. 

[Gurn Blanston]

Doesn't anyone want to talk about Haydn?

[Florestan]

Doesn't anyone want to talk about Haydn?

Yes! Haydn was the epitome of civilization --- so let's get rid of these Huns asap! 

[Scion7]

The Huns died with Attila!  Magyarization, I saaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

<weasel-fur-covered axe-wielding Finno-Ugric berserk don't-spare-the-children warrior emoticon>

[Florestan]

The Huns died with Attila!  Magyarization, I saaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

<weasel-fur-covered axe-wielding Finno-Ugric berserk don't-spare-the-children warrior emoticon>

Huns, Magyars... --- all barbarians. 

Forgive me, oh mighty Gurn, I could not resist... 

[Scion7]

All this talk about storming Talmaclu & Saliste and carrying off the most beautiful two-dozen or so women as my personal breeding-stock has put me in the mood for these for this afternoon.  I probably have not listened to them in 14 years at least.  Oops!  Ah, Op. 76 ....

(those are the Piano Trios in the center - stupid flash)

[Gurn Blanston]

All this talk about storming Talmaclu & Saliste and carrying off the most beautiful two-dozen or so women as my personal breeding-stock has put me in the mood for these for this afternoon.  I probably have not listened to them in 14 years at least.  Oops!  Ah, Op. 76 ....

(those are the Piano Trios in the center - stupid flash)

Good choices!

I'm listening to this outstanding Robert Burns compendium:

[Scion7]

After listening to them catch fire and burn the Piano Trio #45, H.XV.29 to the outer reaches of the magnetosphere - out of curiosity, I wanted to see how these awesome 1969 performances by Huguette Dreyfus (piano)-Eduard Melkus (violin)-Elisabeth Vogt (cello) had fared on CD issue.  Gasp!    They haven't been - is this correct?  I couldn't find anything but re-issues of these original Valois albums.

I have the MHS boxed set of LP's - love the sound of them.  Decent pressings.  One of the many record sets that got me through 2 a.m. solid-state and nuclear physics exam-night cramming.  I bought it sometime during post-1979, but as with all the silver-label MHS sets, no date of issue is listed.  Had to wait for the green-label days for that.



Sometime tomorrow, I'll either scan in the booklet-sheet or take a pic of it that shows the type legibly of Melkus and Harry Halbreich's notes.

The 1971 boxset from Valois themselves:

The original LP's from '69 had good if unspectacular covers . . .

Not sure when this last French-label LP-boxset came out? 

[asin]B00JAS0DS2[/asin]

[Gurn Blanston]

After listening to them catch fire and burn the Piano Trio #45, H.XV.29 to the outer reaches of the magnetosphere - out of curiosity, I wanted to see how these awesome 1969 performances by Huguette Dreyfus (piano)-Eduard Melkus (violin)-Elisabeth Vogt (cello) had fared on CD issue.  Gasp!    They haven't been - is this correct?  I couldn't find anything but re-issues of these original Valois albums.

I have the MHS boxed set of LP's - love the sound of them.  Decent pressings.  One of the many record sets that got me through 2 a.m. solid-state and nuclear physics exam-night cramming.  I bought it sometime during post-1979, but as with all the silver-label MHS sets, no date of issue is listed.  Had to wait for the green-label days for that.

Sometime tomorrow, I'll either scan in the booklet-sheet or take a pic of it that shows the type legibly of Melkus and Harry Halbreich's notes.

The 1971 boxset from Valois themselves:

The original LP's from '69 had good if unspectacular covers . . .
Not sure when this last French-label LP-boxset came out?

Well, I don't do LP's so I know nothing about them, but I will tell you, if they have ever been on CD, it would be pretty surprising if I didn't have them, or at least heard of, since collecting Keyboard Trios on period instruments is one of those things I do. And I like those players so I would have them for sure.

Pretty good, eh?  Many people would tell you that some of Haydn's best music is contained in those late trios. I am particularly fond of them.

[Scion7]

Absolutely.  Completely mature, in charge of his craft, firing on all cylinders.  Personally, I don't feel Beethoven ever surpassed them, even if he matched them with a couple of his.  Same with Mozart.

I'll have to transfer these to computer files one day when I have the time.

Papa puts the piano player to task with the fast movements of these Trios. Dreyfus was up to the task.  Would love video of these guys performing Haydn.

if they have ever been on CD, it would be pretty surprising if I didn't have them ...

This is the kind of thing Brilliant Classics should try to license.  Sigh.