Songs Joseph Haydn

We often think of Haydn as a composer of symphonies, string quartets and piano sonatas – that is, of instrumental music in various forms. But in fact, he probably wrote as much vocal music, in a variety of genres. The late, great oratorios are still justly famous – The Creation and The Seasons – but he also composed twelve large-scale Masses, a number of cantatas and other sacred works, as well as songs, concert arias and as many as 21 operas and Singspiele. Some of these have been lost, but the majority still exist in more or less complete form. The earliest of these is Acide, the fragment of an opera composed for the celebrations of the wedding of Count Anton Esterházy and Countess Maria Theresia Erdödy, and performed at the Esterházy residence at Eisenstadt on 11th January 1763.

This was to be the end of the line for Italian word-setting by Viennese composers: once the confident sentiments that belonged to the poet Metastasio's opera seria felt the chill and threatening wind of Enlightenment and Revolution, their time was up. Even we, for the most part, prefer to remember the German-speaking Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn. So it is good to be reminded of their responses to the Italian muse (usually as part of their craft-learning student work) in this particularly well-cast recital. Central Europe, in the person of Andras Schiff meets Italy, in Cecilia Bartoli, to delightful, often revelatory effect.

In September 1790, following the death of his princely employer, court composer Haydn and his entire orchestra were sacked. As he was considering this change in circumstances, Haydn received an unexpected visit from Johann Peter Salomon, a German impresario based in London, who made him a tempting offer: an opera, six symphonies and twenty other pieces to be written for the city, and a guaranteed income from a new concert series. So it was that, on 2 January 1791, Haydn arrived in England for the first of two visits that would leave an indelible mark both on the musical life of his host country and on the composer himself.

Herbert von Karajan recorded between 1966 and 1968 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and a cast of stars this reference version of 'The Creation' by Joseph Haydn.
After a legendary concert given in 1965 in Salzburg, Herbert von Karajan entered the studio a few months later to record Haydn's masterpiece with the same lead singers, Fritz Wunderlich and Gundula Janowitz. Almost completed in 1966, the recording was abruptly interrupted by the accidental and tragic death of Fritz Wunderlich at the age of 35, on September 17, 1966. The sessions then resume with a young tenor, Werner Krenn, who replaces Wunderlich on the songs. recitatives in particular.

The starting point for Barbara Hannigan’s third recording for Alpha is a work by Gérard Grisey (1946-98) that is particularly close to her heart. Grisey wrote: ‘I conceived the Quatre Chants pour franchir le seuil [Four songs for crossing the threshold] as a musical meditation on death in four parts: the death of the angel, the death of civilisation, the death of the voice and the death of humanity… The texts chosen belong to four civilisations (Christian, Egyptian, Greek, Mesopotamian) and have in common a fragmentary discourse on the inevitability of death.’ Luigi Nono (1924-90) was a politically engaged composer. His stunning monody Djamila Boupacha, a heart-rending cry for solo soprano, pays tribute to a freedom fighter tortured by French paratroopers during the Algerian war; Picasso also portrayed her in charcoal.

The 200th anniversary of Haydn's death arrived in 2009, and this mammoth box boasts one CD for every year that's passed! Well, not quite, but only a composer as prolific as this Viennese-classical master could even come close: 150 CDs of symphonies, concertos, operas, chamber music, oratorios and more beautiful music that have challenged performers and inspired composers for centuries.

Haydn’s songs, German and English, have never quite had the standing they deserve: two of the English canzonettas and one of the German songs here are not even in the current catalogue. Most often they are sung by sopranos, but there is no reason why a tenor shouldn’t be used; Haydn, a tenor, is known to have sung them himself. The performances here, by all three singers and Roger Vignoles’ alert and thoughtful accompanying perhaps plays a key role take them seriously and show them as the substantial music they are.

The collection of Lang Lang’s Complete Recordings brings together the treasure-trove of recordings that present all the many facets of the pianist’s first decade as a recording artist from 2000–2009. The set also includes his solo and concerto debut albums on the Telarc label.

In a scene where the recordings of young sopranos tend toward an extreme sameness, Austria's Anna Prohaska would deserve kudos simply for the ambition of this release of soldiers' songs. The idea, especially for a female singer, is original, and the music draws on a great variety of sources, from Scottish song to Wolfgang Rihm. Better still is the execution, which shows Prohaska's extreme versatility.