Haydn Bruggens

A Musical clock is a clock that marks the hours of the day with a musical tune played from a spiked cylinder either on bells, organ pipes, bellows, combs and even dulcimer strings. The earliest ones began in mainly churches and would be used to mark times for the public and for farmers in fields to tell them when it was sunset dawn and lunchtime.

You have to look at the German-language tracklist to see what you're getting here: not two separate "Creation Masses," but the late Haydn Mass in B flat major, H. 22/13 ("Schöpfungsmesse"), composed in 1801, along with a mass by Salzburg-based composer Luigi Gatti. This is not an original work but an adaptation of Haydn's oratorio The Creation, with texts from the mass fitted to musically and liturgically appropriate melodies. This work, rediscovered only recently, was apparently one of a number of sacred adaptations of secular works that appeared around this time.

Haydn’s Seven Last Words—heard here in the composer’s own arrangement for string quartet—is simply sublime, and a fitting testimonial to the composer’s deep, enduring faith. It provides an apt and generous coupling for the two magnificent Op 77 quartets, Haydn’s final complete contribution to the string quartet genre.

Trio Stadtlmann is a Japanese trio formed and active in Switzerland, featuring the world's rarest stringed instrument, the baritone. Celebrating their 10th anniversary, the Trio Stadtlmann released their first recorded work with the cooperation of Tokyo Zoshigaya Haiobun-tei, which has been conducting a project to perform Haydn's complete baritone trio works. It also includes the only quintet in existence that includes two horns!

The city of Eisenstadt was the location of the Esterhazy Court where Joseph Haydn was music director for 25 years. Prince Nikolaus commissioned Haydn to write trios for the baryton, an instrument on which the Prince had become proficient. The baryton is a bowed, stringed instrument similar to the viol but with extra plucked strings that can enable the performer to accompany themselves. For Nikolaus, Haydn wrote string trios of elegance, refinement and poise that encapsulate a rich variety of moods. Seldom performed or recorded, the baryton trios attest to Haydn's limitless powers of invention in every medium.

A rising star of the young generation, the Akos Quartet devotes its first album to the tutelary figure of the repertoire, Joseph Haydn, whose six op.76 quartets dedicated to Count Erdödy are among his most famous. Of an unprecedented modernity coupled with a unique freshness, these quartets also bear witness to a lyrical depth that heralded the Beethovenian era.