Haydn Russian

The calling card here is the use of an Amsterdam edition of Haydn's Op. 33 string quartets that reverses the order of some of the inner movements. It's never made clear why this edition should get priority over the dozens of others that circulated around Europe, with and without Haydn's consent, but so be it; there are some tempo novelties here that shed some light on how Haydn's music was received, at least in some quarters. There the good news ends.

The history of the Russian chamber ensemble of the middle of the 20th century, in all possibility, did not know a more intricate yet remarkable brilliant group of musicians than the celebrated trio of Emil Gilels. Leonid Kogan and Mstislav Rostropovich. All to different in their essence were these three artistic individualities – these three virtuosos, spoilt children of fortune, who were brought together at various stages of disclosure of their outstanding talents. At that, there was not a great difference between their respective ages – Gilels was born in 1916, Kogan was born in 1924 and Rostropovich was born in 1927. Nonetheless, whereas Gilels was already able to reconsider and revise in many ways his principles of work, departing further and further from a pure demonstration of capabilities of his breathtaking technique, Rostropovich and Kogan were still passing through their lengthy period of thrill over their virtuosic powers, affecting their audiences in a straightforward manner.

Virile, colourful performances … sharply responsive to the music's robust earthiness and gleeful unpredictability. On 3 December 1781 Joseph Haydn dictated to his secretary a round robin letter inviting subscriptions to a new set of string quartets. The new Quartets, now know as Opus 33, were dedicated to the Russian Grand Duke Pavel Petrowich (1754-1801), hence their collective nickname. Opus 33 was a great success for Haydn. It was rapidly taken up and re-published in other European capitals, by Hummel in Berlin, by Schmitt in Amsterdam, by Napier and Forster in London, by Guera in Lyons, and by Le Menu and Boyer and then by Sieber in Paris.

Virile, colourful performances … sharply responsive to the music's robust earthiness and gleeful unpredictability. On 3 December 1781 Joseph Haydn dictated to his secretary a round robin letter inviting subscriptions to a new set of string quartets. The new Quartets, now know as Opus 33, were dedicated to the Russian Grand Duke Pavel Petrowich (1754-1801), hence their collective nickname. Opus 33 was a great success for Haydn. It was rapidly taken up and re-published in other European capitals, by Hummel in Berlin, by Schmitt in Amsterdam, by Napier and Forster in London, by Guera in Lyons, and by Le Menu and Boyer and then by Sieber in Paris.

From the notes: If we wish to get an insight into what our music-loving grandparents regarded as "the Classical style", we need look no further than these discs, representing the work of the modern world's first great Franco-Belgian string quartet ensemble. Here is the epitome of the wristy bowing, springy rhythm and gutty but delicate sound, with its restrained vibrato, which flourished in Brussels, Liège and Paris until the Second World War, when it began to give ground to the advance of the Russian school. By the time these precious records were made, even the Flonzaley Quartet had taken a Russian violinist to its bosom - but the essential lightness and clarity of the Franco-Belgian method survived…. The Flonzaley Quartet was a full-time group composed of four absolutely equal partners and its performances were immaculately groomed. written by Tully Potter

Carlo Maria Giulini was born in Barletta, Southern Italy in May 1914 with what appears to have been an instinctive love of music. As the town band rehearsed he could be seen peering through the ironwork of the balcony of his parents’ home, immovable and intent. The itinerant fiddlers who roamed the countryside during the lean years of the First World War also caught his ear. In 1919, the family moved to the South Tyrol, where the five-year-old Carlo asked his parents for "one of those things the street musicians play". Signor Giulini acquired a three-quarter size violin, setting in train a process which would take his son from private lessons with a kindly nun to violin studies with Remy Principe at Rome’s Academy of St Cecilia at the age of 16.

Composed in the summer and autumn of 1781, Haydn’s Op. 33 Quartets were dedicated to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia and premiered on Christmas Day that year in the apartment of the Duke’s wife, the Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna. Nicknamed ‘the Russian quartets’, Op. 33 were some of Mozart’s favourites among Haydn’s works, and inspired Mozart to write his own set of six quartets, of 1785, dedicated to Haydn.