Haydn 88 slow movement

[verismissimo]

Listening to La Petite Bande under Kuijken, I was surprised by the slow speed they take in the slow movement - 7:00 minutes.

It seems very sluggish to me, even tho it's marked Largo. Furtwangler in his classic BPO recording takes 6:18, and Dorati with the Philharmonia Hungarica takes 5:38. That still sounds a bit under optimum to me.

Any views?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Doesn't Kuijiken observe both repeats (WF & AD take neither)? So his equivalent timing would be 3 and a half minutes?

(Not sure about this: I'll try and find my CDs in this mess - I may be some time!)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I haven't heard this one, but I've always been surprised that many people like "slow" to be fast. A slow movement is, surely, erm... slow?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

My apologies! You're absolutely right: Kuijken's tempo is slower than Furtwangler's. (I can't find my BPO version, but the timing on a "Live" VPO performance from 1951 is just a little longer at 6' 20").

[rauschwerk]

There are no repeat marks in this movement. Kuijken begins at crotchet=48 approx: Colin Davis (who, along with Szell, takes 5'50" for the movement) begins at crotchet=60 approx. Davis's tempo is still a slow one, and to my mind Kuijken is too slow.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There are no repeat marks in this movement.

I can only apologise again for my gaff.

to my mind Kuijken is too slow.

Taken out of context, I agree. But I've enjoyed this performance for years and it's only now,when I've done the comparison with WF, that it seems too slow to me: in context, it's never seemed so.

[rauschwerk]

Taken out of context, I agree. But I've enjoyed this performance for years and it's only now,when I've done the comparison with WF, that it seems too slow to me: in context, it's never seemed so.

I quote Charles Rosen:-

"We have all heard performances at clearly inauthentic and even absurd tempos which turn out to be revealing, instructive, moving or brilliantly effective."

Kuijken doesn't convince me in this movement but no doubt he convinces many. I'm quite sure he gave the matter careful thought. Haydn's largo direction is not crystal clear to us, after all. Did he mean somewhere between andante and adagio, or something slower?

[Pabmusic]

My view is that the 'right' tempo is one that articulates the shortest notes well, such as those in bar 65 (v1), in the acoustic available. That would give the tempo for the whole movement, which might be different in other acoustics.

[verismissimo]

Robbins Landon wrote: "The great slow movement, of which Brahms is reported to have said, 'I want my Ninth Symphony to sound like that', is a variation movement built on one of Haydn's hymn-tunes and marked Largo... The effect is as original as the Prelude to Tristan if we attune our ears to anno 1788... How Haydn enriches the theme as the movement progresses is a wonder to behold."

But he says nothing in the notes to the Dorati recording re the speed implied by Largo.

[verismissimo]

I just re-listened to Bernstein with the VPO and he's even slower than Kuijken at 7:20. But he makes a real case for it - wonderful line and shaping. What a great conductor of Haydn he was!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I just re-listened to Bernstein with the VPO and he's even slower than Kuijken at 7:20. But he makes a real case for it - wonderful line and shaping. What a great conductor of Haydn he was!

I don't know his Haydn, but his VPO set of the late Mozart symphonies is my favourite "big band" version: cracking speeds and all repeats observed - it was a real "helter-skelter" moment for me when I first heard the Finale of the Prague Symphony with its lurch back from the Coda to the beginning of the Development. A "great conductor", indeed!

[Alf-Prufrock]

Though in general terms I think the historical movement gets things basically right (though their performances are frequently sub-par), I have to thank Leonard Bernstein for putting me onto Haydn symphonies. His set of the Paris symphonies converted me neck and crop when I bought the LPs in the seventies, and especially 87 in A major where I could not get that driving first movement out of my head for days. No other performance of it has excited me quite as much since, not even Norrington though he gets close.

[jayne lee wilson]

Sitting down? Got the brandy handy?

Hermann Scherchen, Haydn 88 (VSOO/1952), movement timings:

1)5'15
2)10'04
3)3'50
4)3'29

So what's it like? Extreme, obviously! Er, can't remember, will report back later...

[jayne lee wilson]

Well! Goodness...
Haydn No.88, Scherchen/VSOO ...?

Richly sonorous in the Viennese manner, with the sharpest of articulation at high speed in the "Scherchen-VSOO-With-Enough-Rehearsal-Time-For-a-Change" manner in the fast movements, and at an extraordinarily slow pace in the Largo - this is a great, a radical, creative interpretation - almost a re-creation.

The first movement goes past so furiously you've barely time to admire the passion, the horns soaring majestically across the high drama of the development, before the recap is nearly done.

So the Largo begins and you think, structurally, this can't work. Then something remarkable happens. The sheer beauty of sound, the vividness of the mood created, takes you to a distant realm, sonically and emotionally. Quite timeless. Something of an awakening when it ends.

Then, back in the hurly-burly, the secular dispatch of the minuet and finale, so rapid it might seem inconsequential - if they weren't so brilliantly played, leaving the listener gasping at their speed, power and glory.
And then the symphony is done.

Only a few conductors would dare attempt such a thing - Celibidache comes to mind - and even fewer would get away with it, let alone astonish and enrich the listener as Scherchen does here.

Collectors' Note - probably only available now in the DG Original Masters box, 5 discs of Scherchen's Haydn recordings, distinguished also by a fascinating essay by Bernhard Uske.

ps. thanks to verismissimo for provoking me to listen to No.88 again! Won't be the last from this box either... yet another on the listening table pile...