Music patronage is something many musicians today look back to with deep nostalgia. The presence of rich, frequently aristocratic men and women who liked to spend a conspicuous part of their wealth on music, thus providing bread and opportunities to countless composers and performers, is regarded as a true blessing for art history and for those who lived it.
Commissioned by the Comte d’Ogny for the Le Concert de la Loge Olympique, the ‘Paris’ Symphonies form a key milestone in Haydn’s output.
Recently there seems to be an increasing interest in the music of Johann Michael Haydn. For a long time he was only mentioned as being the younger brother of Franz Joseph, and a good friend of Mozart, but his music was almost completely ignored. From time to time a record with sacred music or chamber music was released, but he was't appearing on concert programmes and in the record catalogue frequently. 2006 was the bicentennial of his death, and this apparently led to a number of new recordings with his music. One must hope this isn't a temporary wave, but the beginning of a thorough and serious exploration of his oeuvre.
Co-chief conductors Riccardo Minasi and Maxim Emelyanychev take turns on the podium leading this period-instrument band in a rousing collection of concertos by Haydn. Il Pomo d'Oro has been hailed "a wonderful ensemble, and Minasi an outstanding musician" capable of "bringing the house down with his virtuosity" (The Guardian). Emelyaychev's award-winning harpsichord joins Minasi's violin in the soloists' spotlight, along with the distinguished natural horn of Johannes Hinterholzer. The concertos are complemented by Haydn's Symphony No 83 (known as The Hen, because of the ‘clucking’ figures on the strings in its second movement) and his Keyboard Fantasia Hob.XVII:4.
Here is a collection of the biggest musical institution in Germany performing works from the core of its repertoire: Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven & Schubert.
Only a relatively small proportion of Haydn's works are present in today's concert repertoire. While every compositional exercise by other composers, no matter how insignificant, has been catalogued, it is extremely difficult to get an overview of the enormous oeuvre of the father of Viennese classical music. Haydn's long life certainly plays a role in this: born in the High Baroque period, he experienced the zenith of the Classical period and still touched on the beginnings of Romanticism in his old age. The scoring with two violins instead of the more usual violin and viola has certainly also contributed to the fact that a chamber music collection that is particularly attractive in many respects has remained almost completely unknown until now.
Here is a collection of the biggest musical institution in Germany performing works from the core of its repertoire: Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven & Schubert.