Haydn Cello

Franz Joseph Haydn’s outpouring of music during his three decades as musical director for the rich and powerful Esterházy princes is breathtaking, encompassing long lists of symphonies, chamber pieces, and operas. Concertos were also well represented, a fact that would surprise many modern listeners since his concertos are by and large ignored today. Both of Haydn’s extant cello concertos arrived at modern concert halls with complicated musicological baggage attached. His splendid Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major lay in oblivion for perhaps two centuries, known through an entry in his catalogue that enabled it to be dated to 1765 at the latest, but given up for lost until its manuscript resurfaced in 1961. His D major Cello Concerto, the work heard in this concert, was accordingly accepted during that span as his only surviving work in the genre, but even it ran into problems.

Maisky takes the dual role of soloist and conductor on this single disc issue. It receives a well-deserved Penguin Rosette in The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2009. I wasn't familiar with the works on this CD before buying it. I'm an avid classical music CD collector and not too shabby amateur pianist (heavy emphasis on the amateur) and am currently listening to a course on Papa Haydn by Robert Greenberg from "The Great Courses" (formerly The Teaching Company), in addition to personally working on a Haydn Piano Sonata. As such, I've got a new found appreciation for this composer.

In 2004, Jean-Guihen Queyras and the Freiburger Barockorchester offered us a prodigious interpretation of Haydn’s two cello concertos, coupled with a rare concerto by Georg Matthias Monn, a pioneer of the genre. A version now recognized as a landmark in the discography.

During Joseph Haydn’s lifetime, concertos for solo instruments and ensemble were generally written for a particular musician. In the case of Haydn’s violoncello Concerto in D major Hob.VII:2, this person was Anton Kraft, first cello in the Esterházy ensemble and later one of Vienna’s greatest virtuosi. This composition for a particular occasion has become a masterpiece for the ages; an autograph score by the composer survives, dating from 1783. The services of Haydn specialist Sonja Gerlach have been obtained for this edition of the concerto with piano accompaniment. She enriches the Urtext edition with a detailed preface that also examines the execution of the ornaments and the cadenzas.

Cellist Cameron Crozman returns with a new recording of Joseph Haydn’s Cello Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 and Jacques Hétu’s Rondo for Cello and String Orchestra, Op. 9. He joins Les Violons du Roy conducted by Nicolas Ellis.