Haydn Symphonies

This is part of a series of releases on the Naxos label devoted to the 40 symphonies of Michael Haydn, younger brother of Franz Joseph. These have been commercially successful, and it's easy to see why: there's music of unsuspected high quality here, and you can see why the younger Haydn's work was taken for Mozart's in several cases for decades, and why Mozart, who was spare in his praise of other composers, bestowed it upon this one. All four of these symphonies are in the three-movement form that Mozart had mostly left behind by the late 1770s and 1780s (when the Haydn works were composed), but the individual movements are quite confidently handled, with the elegant but harmonically wide-ranging slow movements perhaps the best of the lot.

Musicology is alive and well!« Those who have followed the release history of our edition of the symphonies of Michael Haydn will necessarily have to come to this same conclusion. Whenever another one of his forty-one symphonies that was thought to be lost was found, it was immediately slated for production – and this took its time. During this period the artistic constellations, by which we mean the orchestras and conductors, underwent modification. But now we are on the homestretch: Frank Beermann and the German Chamber Academy of Neuss (continuity!) have produced a splendid recording of the nine »missing« symphonies. These works offer an overview of the entire creative career of Joseph Haydn's younger brother and once again reveal to us a highly imaginative artist who delighted in experimentation and abounded in musical humor. It is thus hardly surprising that the young Mozart repeatedly followed his lead and took him as his model.

The precision and polish of the ensemble in the playing of the conductorless Orpheus Chamber Orchestra remains a marvel. These performances follow up the success of the group's three previous DG discs of Haydn symphonies, but I am sorry that the pattern adopted last time of having three works coupled, representing different periods, has not been adopted again. The idea here is to couple one of the last of the ''London'' Symphonies with No. 78, one of three symphonies (Nos. 76-78) which represented a London contact in advance, intended as they were for possible performance in the Hanover Square Rooms.

Joseph Haydn - Symphonies Nos. 31, 70 & 101 - Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Robin Ticciati (2015) {Linn Records CKD 500}
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© 2015 Linn Records | CKD 500
Classical / Viennese School / Symphony

For those looking for a fresh read on Haydn's symphonies, look no further than this release by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and youthful conductor Robin Ticciati. They offer a trio of symphonies in D major, from different parts of Haydn's career, and all have the feeling of having been taken up by musicians who had no preconceptions about them. The general classification of the performance is modern-instrument with influences from the historical-performance movement. The splendid hunting-horn quartets that open the Symphony No. 31, Hob. 1/31, are given to gutsy natural horns, and the lyrical effect of the various solo passages in the slow movement is amplified by the emergence of a continuo fortepiano.