Haydn Orfeus Chamber Orchestra

f you thought Mozart’s Salzburg serenades were big works, then check out this extravaganza in nine movements, lasting just about an hour. Composed in 1764 and scored for everything but the kitchen sink, the work includes an opening march, two minuets, and major concerto movements for solo clarinet and solo trombone (yes, I did say trombone). Both are often performed separately. Michael Haydn’s proto-classical style is, as you might expect, graceful, tuneful, and easy on the ear, and if you are familiar with any of the other releases from Klöcker and his Prague forces, then you know that you can expect lively, elegant music-making (and some terrific clarinet playing).

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.

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.

A year and a half after Alexander Liebreich succeeded Christoph Poppen as artistic director of the Munich Chamber Orchestra, their first recording is about to be released. As always the orchestra, cited twice this decade by the German Music Publishers Association for the best-programmed season, is striking out on challenging and unconventional paths. Each season is governed by a guiding theme; new concert formats are put to the test; and new works are commissioned on a regular basis. (In early December 2007 it gave the world premiere of Erkki-Sven Tuur's ‘Questions…’ with the Hilliard Ensemble in Frankfurt.) This new release, the orchestra’s eighth album for ECM, reflects not only its precept to keep its repertoire deliberately open-ended, but Liebreich's special predilection for Isang Yun, a composer whose music he came to understand in its cultural context during an extended stay in Korea.

Fresh from their critically acclaimed series of the complete symphonies of Beethoven (8.505251) and Brahms (8.574465-67), the Danish Chamber Orchestra and Adam Fischer turn to Haydn’s late symphonies, beginning with the first three of the twelve ‘London’ symphonies, composed during Haydn’s first visit to the capital. Arguably his greatest achievements in the genre, they include the enduringly popular ‘surprise’ in the slow movement of No. 94. Fischer and his orchestra, who have performed together for over two decades, employ varied bowing and playing styles in the strings and innovative dynamic techniques in the winds that bring new levels of excitement to these masterpieces.

Like Emanuel Ax on Sony, Leif Ove Andsnes confines himself to the three concertos that have been fully authenticated. Had the works generally known as 'the Haydn piano concertos' been these three and not a rag-bag of juvenilia and pieces attributed to Haydn, the canon might have been more highly thought. But even the slightest work can dazzle and delight if it's performed as well as these are here.