Haydn 2032

[Beef Oven!]

Oh yes you're right. Well it used to be Pinnock, but now it's Antonini.

Thanks for clarifying. Wow! I will really savour the Antonini listen!

[jayne lee wilson]

Have either of you heard Bruggen or Thomas Fey in the Lamentatione? I regard both as outstanding if personally just inclined to the Bruggen. Fey goes to extremes of tempi and mood. Hard to face, Hard to resist...
No.26 means a lot to me - as iconic as Schnittke 5 - so now the tracks are no longer greyed-out on Qobuz I'll try the 2032 one later tonight...

I'm afraid I find Pinnock terribly lightweight in No.26, underplaying the tragic essence of the work. His adagio comes to 5'13, as compared to 9'49 (!) for Fey - a true tragic adagio, remarkably done. I see Antonini has 7'49 - promising. Bruggen only takes 5'50, but his genius for phrase and colour still get the OAE to the darkly liturgical heart of it - then devastates us all with his final minuet....much slower in the repeat after that positively-bipolar trio.

Quite some piece. If it works as I think it should, you should need an interval after it....
(on the original Philips Bruggen set it was followed by the Passione....! Too much of a good (tragic) thing, perhaps...

[Beef Oven!]

Jayne, I've not heard the Bruggen. My mileage is different on the Pinnock, I find it wonderfully fleet and gloriously melodious!

[Richard Barrett]

underplaying the tragic essence of the work

I wouldn't say that the work has a "tragic essence" actually. The liner notes of the CD quote a contemporary biographical note by Albert Christoph Dies, saying that

[Haydn] oftentimes had portrayed moral characters in his symphonies. In one of his oldest, which, however, he could not accurately identify, "the dominant idea is of God speaking with an abandoned sinner, pleading with him to reform. But the sinner in his thoughtlessness pays no heed to the admonition."

(I'm quoting a text which claims to be a translation of the original and which is a bit different from the one quoted in the CD.)

This statement is identified with the slow movement of no.26, where the violins represent the "thoughtless sinner" and the plainsong material the "voice of God". This idea could be extended to the first movement also. I think the variations in duration in recordings of the Adagio have more to do with which sections are repeated than with tempo.

[MickyD]

Sorry to say that I found the new Antonini #26 a little too clipped and severe, but it's good to have another version of this marvellous symphony. I'll stick with Hogwood.

[Mal]

... I'm afraid I find Pinnock terribly lightweight in No.26, underplaying the tragic essence of the work...

I agree with you here, I prefer Marriner/ASMF and Ward/NCO; they both (especially Marriner...) get the plangent strings working very well to bring out the tragic essence. But I can imagine Bruggen and Fey being a bit more dynamic, having heard both in other symphonies.

[Mal]

I wouldn't say that the work has a "tragic essence" actually... the violins represent the "thoughtless sinner" and the plainsong material the "voice of God". This idea could be extended to the first movement also. I think the variations in duration in recordings of the Adagio have more to do with which sections are repeated than with tempo.

Richard Wigmore suggests it was "probably" written for performance in Holy Week and that the "lashing syncopations" represent Christ's scourgings, followed by Christ (quiet response in long notes) responding to the Evangelist and the crowd of baying Jews. The slow movement, Wigmore suggests, reflects the lamentations of Jeremiah - poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem. So it all sounds rather tragic! Then again, Wigmore may just be making an informed guess. In any case, it's music not a piece of historical writing, so if Jayne finds a "tragic essence" then she finds a "tragic essence" and you can't really argue against that.

[Richard Barrett]

Richard Wigmore suggests it was "probably" written for performance in Holy Week and that the "lashing syncopations" represent Christ's scourgings, followed by Christ (quiet response in long notes) responding to the Evangelist and the crowd of baying Jews. The slow movement, Wigmore suggests, reflects the lamentations of Jeremiah - poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem. So it all sounds rather tragic!

Well, does he have any actual evidence to base all of this on? Note for example that "Lamentatione" was not a title given to it by Haydn, and also that surely Dies's account is far more "in tune" with Haydn's musical personality as displayed in his other works. Having said that, I would be the first to add that music takes place precisely in the relationship between sounds and people, so that anyone should feel free to hear anything their intuition draws them to hear in any music. I think the phrase "crowd of baying Jews" probably says a lot more about the person using it than it does about Haydn.

[jayne lee wilson]

As the Hanssler notes to the Fey recording make clear (and the 2032 note follows up on) the Symphony No.26 was composed for Easter Week 1768 - specifically liturgical. The Gregorian Chant incipit lamentatio used in the adagio means what it says: ‘here begins the lamentation” - from Jeremiah. As Robbins-Landon points out, the first movement’s 2nd subject refers to the mediaeval Passion of Christ plainchant, a tragic subject in itself and very similar to the Lamentatio. The second movement revolves around this and concludes with it. So this thematic strand of the work seems clear.

The minuet is so obviously a narrative of anguish that surely no listener would misconstrue it. Nor is its monothematic trio-minuet ambiguity unique in Haydn: something similar happens in No.52 and No.44. (Fascinatingly close relatives of each other…).
Haydn was too wise to see the tragic always as an unambiguous experience; there is often the so-human tendency to try to cheer oneself up; the trio of No.26, on the same theme as the minuet of course, sounds (to me at least, I trust not uniquely) as an almost despairing attempt to do exactly that: there’s a nervousness about it, a half-hearted jollity. Then the minuet comes inescapably back.
Here begins, and here ends, The Lamentation…

But if you play everything on broadly the same emotional level as Pinnock does, ironing out mood and tempi contrasts, this gets missed - or at least understated. His horns are scarcely audible at the adagio’s end, which is very anti-climactic and seriously undersells the emotional import - that sense of beatification.

***
The grimly determined pessimism the first movement begins with is soon relieved by a brighter mood - but the “mediaeval passion-tone” (Robbins-Landon), coming as it does at the exposition’s end and returning in the recap, feels like an attempt to placate or to bless an ambiguous, slightly manic emotional state. (Bruggen’s very considered, chiaroscuro-toned, subtly paced account emphasises this dichotomy beautifully, where Pinnock feels sombre but understated and Antonini can strike the listener as sometimes just too cock-a-hoop. Note too Bruggen’s warm, expressive basslines as compared to the merely dogged Pinnock).
Then the adagio is a meditation upon that blessing, a calm space of prayer and reflection in which the violins pay continuous, close, respectful attention to the plainchant. (I do find it hard to hear them as “thoughtless”, whether sinful or not…they sound rather devotional to me.… interesting story though).

Which is then superseded by that final anguished minuet - the trio a brief, self-unconvincing attempt at escape - the despair, the tragedy persists. In my end is my beginning…
(Very surprised to see the 2032 notes, very good on the Easter/Liturgy aspect of No.26, saying that this minuet “is still sombre but restores optimism”. Really? There are few Haydn movements that end so bleakly. We are left "staring bleakly into the deathly cold of the grave" as the Fey note says.)

***
I liked the allegro and adagio of the new Antonini 2032/ 26 - well, to some extent. A shade stiff and metrical, but never as rushed or as literal as were some of this series’ earlier efforts. Of its predecessors, it’s closest to the Bruggen, if without his special sense of the ethereal, of unworldliness.
But Antonini’s minuet is rather brusque and lacks contrast with the trio, and those staccato barks running through the latter are a literal, and for me musically unmeaningful, distraction. (The starkly explicit acoustic, whilst lending an apt tonal severity, doesn't help the subtler shades of expression).
Bruggen and Fey are far more more careful with those; and with their slower, more varied tempi and stronger rhythmic momentum, find so much more in this music.
The adagio in the Fey recording is much slower than Bruggen or Pinnock. Yes, the repeat leading to the Oboes/Horns’ concluding restatement of the incipit is taken, but that is only a part of why the performance is so much longer, weightier and more profound. (True of Antonini at a swifter pace too, and I think this repeat is an essential one.)

All of these recordings have their merits, but anyone who loves this work really needs to hear Fey and Bruggen (in the minuet especially) to truly appreciate its emotional depth and range.

[Richard Barrett]

The minuet is so obviously a narrative of anguish that surely no listener would misconstrue it.

I don't agree. I don't think it's in any way necessary to read a "narrative of anguish" into that music. You can if you wish - but to characterise not doing so as "misconstruing" Haydn seems rather exaggerated to me.

anyone who loves this work really needs to hear Fey and Bruggen (in the minuet especially) to truly appreciate its emotional depth and range

Again this is far too prescriptive. The alternatives aren't "hear it the way Jayne hears it" or "hear less than that". I would have thought that an intelligent response to music would necessarily involve understanding that it doesn't need to be appreciated in a particular way, particularly music with the kind of depth and indeed ambiguity that Haydn's has, and that anyone who doesn't appreciate it that way is missing something.

[jayne lee wilson]

I don't agree. I don't think it's in any way necessary to read a "narrative of anguish" into that music. You can if you wish - but to characterise not doing so as "misconstruing" Haydn seems rather exaggerated to me.
Again this is far too prescriptive. The alternatives aren't "hear it the way Jayne hears it" or "hear less than that". I would have thought that an intelligent response to music would necessarily involve understanding that it doesn't need to be appreciated in a particular way, particularly music with the kind of depth and indeed ambiguity that Haydn's has, and that anyone who doesn't appreciate it that way is missing something.

This has often been misunderstood here in the past.... I'm not saying "hear it the way Jayne hears it", so much as "if you hear these specific recordings, I think you'll gain a deeper or broader understanding of what this music has (or if you prefer, "may have") to say". Surely you wouldn't deny that different recordings offer different, often new and important insights? In which case, it is at the very least difficult to maintain that every recording has some sort of equivalent value to all the others. It should also be unnecessary to put "IMHO" throughout a lengthy commentary or review; of course it is my personal view (God knows, I say so often enough).

Why do you think I quote diametrically different opinion from various notes or reviews? Because of course I recognise the potential interpretational ambiguity of a musical work. Which doesn't preclude expression of my own particular take on it (or my more generalised conviction about the anguished expression in this specific work's minuet).. And why I of course welcome other views....I only wish we had more.

***
Finally though, I do indeed stand by my (personal, subjective, intuitive, IMHO ) reading of this extraordinary Symphony No.26; and feel that both the bibliographical sources and subjective musical experiences (as reported in various reviews and comments elsewhere) back that up, very powerfully.

(Incidentally, why do you now prefer Antonini to Pinnock?)...

[Bryn]

I had planned to head off to Ness Beach, Shaldon for the mid-summer sunrise but a debilitating muscular spasm running from my lower right side of spine, down ny right quads had led me to take the better side of valour, so tomorrow I will instead listen to the Kuijken, Pinnock, Hogwood, Bruggen and Antonini recordings of 'Lamentatione'. The Kuijken/Petite Bande recording does not seem to have been mentioned in this recent discussion re. the Antonini. Is it not considered worthy?

[MickyD]

I had planned to head off to Ness Beach, Shaldon for the mid-summer sunrise but a debilitating muscular spasm running from my lower right side of spine, down ny right quads had led me to take the better side of valour, so tomorrow I will instead listen to the Kuijken, Pinnock, Hogwood, Bruggen and Antonini recordings of 'Lamentatione'. The Kuijken/Petite Bande recording does not seem to have been mentioned in this recent discussion re. the Antonini. Is it not considered worthy?

I have the Kuijken, Bryn and think it's well worth a listen. But personally I still like Hogwood's warm sound. Must try to get to hear the Bruggen, that is one I have never heard.

Hope your health improves soon, muscular spasms are awful, I've thankfully just managed to get rid of a long-running one the length of my back.

[Mal]

Penguin give Kuijken/La Petite Band a key for 26. Any love for Dorati or Fischer? (I have Fischer and I think he drops the rod in this one...)

[LMcD]

Just caught up with this thread. I didn't realize that there are 107 symphonies, although I have heard the Sinfonia Concertante referred to as No. 105. Which works are the 'other two'?