Haydn 2032

[Richard Barrett]

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'?

There are two written in the late 1750s which are referred to (rather confusingly) as A and B.

[Bryn]

There are two written in the late 1750s which are referred to (rather confusingly) as A and B.

Then there's all those yet to be rediscovered.

[Mal]

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'?

According to Wigmore:

Symphony "A" No 107 was wrongly identified as a string quartet (Op 1 No. 5)
Symphony "B" No 108 ditto (original publisher must have been asleep as it has solos for oboe, horn and basoon...)

So that makes 107 symphonies, but Wigmore doesn't mention a symphony No.106! Wikipedia suggests:

"Hob. I/106 in D major, for which only one part has survived (1769?); sometimes used as the overture to Le pescatrici"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_symphonies_by_Joseph_Haydn

Fischer's "complete" box set doesn't have 106. Dorati has the reputation of being "very complete", e.g., contains different movements, but I'm not sure if has 106 or not. One way to get this for your collection, with other promising non-duplicate material, might be to buy a complete overtures set, like:

Haydn: The Complete Overtures by, Haydn Sinfonietta Wien, Manfred Huss

I haven't heard this - Gramophone & Classics Today give it a good review.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

There are two written in the late 1750s which are referred to (rather confusingly) as A and B.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWtYxpM2s-k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgluWmckwU0

[Richard Barrett]

Anyway, back to no.26. It's difficult to say exactly what I find so attractive in Antonini's recordings but it's very similar to the attention to detail and individuation of each piece I would associate with the (unfortunately too few) recordings of the symphonies conducted by Harnoncourt, next to which Pinnock's work strikes me as a bit too clean-cut and Hogwood as a bit undercharacterised. Of course not everyone will agree with these assessments and no one recording will do justice to all the possibilities inherent in Haydn's scores (many of which, of course, he himself may well not have been conscious of).

[Richard Barrett]

Haydn: The Complete Overtures by, Haydn Sinfonietta Wien, Manfred Huss

All the Haydn they have recorded is absolutely marvellous, especially the large number of variously scored Divertimenti.

[MickyD]

All the Haydn they have recorded is absolutely marvellous, especially the large number of variously scored Divertimenti.

Thanks for jogging my memory about these recordings, Richard - I knew of them but never acquired the discs. Your recommendation is enough for me to go ahead!

[Mal]

In discussing Huss' intrepid foray into early, minor Haydn, Third ear is rather critical of the divertimentos suggesting they "weren't intended for close scrutiny". So maybe I'll give these a miss for now. Third ear isn't that enthusiastic about the overtures, either, but does say "much more worth investigating are the "scherzandos," a series of six miniature symphonies written when Haydn was 29. They're challenging similar to the best of his later works..." So maybe I'll start there with Huss. Or maybe I'll just stop :)

[Richard Barrett]

In discussing Huss' intrepid foray into early, minor Haydn, Third ear is rather critical of the divertimentos suggesting they "weren't intended for close scrutiny". So maybe I'll give these a miss for now. Third ear isn't that enthusiastic about the overtures, either, but does say "much more worth investigating are the "scherzandos," a series of six miniature symphonies written when Haydn was 29. They're challenging similar to the best of his later works..." So maybe I'll start there with Huss. Or maybe I'll just stop :)

Well, it depends what you want. The box set with the Scherzandi, Notturni, Baryton Octets etc. contains more "mature" Haydn, and maybe the early Divertimenti are more for the hardcore Haydnist, but although no doubt they weren't intended for close scrutiny as you say, Haydn was too much into his craft for a glint of his genius, so to speak, not to shine out from everything he did. In other words, in a certain sense there isn't anything "minor", and to me there's a profundity in that which draws me to these supposedly ephemeral pieces. (It's always better to listen first and read reviews later anyway, I find!)

[Lion-of-Vienna]

Returning to the new Antonini disc, I was pleased to hear on it a performance of Symphony No.3. Whilst not on the same emotional level as No.26, after all it was written some 8 years earlier in his pre-Esterhazy years, it is one of the more mature of Haydn’s early symphonies, later than its numbering suggests. It is one of the first to have 4 movements. Robbins Landon comments on the modernity of some parts of the work (particularly the first movement) contrasted with other parts that are rooted in the Austrian Baroque tradition. It finds the composer flexing his contrapuntal muscles with a minuet in the form of a canon and a fugal finale similar to the finales of some of the Opus 20 String Quartets.

I have always enjoyed Symphony No.3 because it was included on one of my first LPs, a Pye Golden Guinea disc played by the Little Orchestra of London conducted by Leslie Jones and coupled with Nos.39 and 73. I bought a number of their LPs in the 1960s and they launched me on a lifetime’s discovery of the Haydn symphonies. How I wish that someone would reissue Jones’s many recordings of the early symphonies on CD. They seem to have been completely forgotten today yet they were influential in making these early works known to a wider public in the 1960s (before Dorati embarked upon his complete set).

[jayne lee wilson]

Anyway, back to no.26. It's difficult to say exactly what I find so attractive in Antonini's recordings but it's very similar to the attention to detail and individuation of each piece I would associate with the (unfortunately too few) recordings of the symphonies conducted by Harnoncourt, next to which Pinnock's work strikes me as a bit too clean-cut and Hogwood as a bit undercharacterised. Of course not everyone will agree with these assessments and no one recording will do justice to all the possibilities inherent in Haydn's scores (many of which, of course, he himself may well not have been conscious of).

Thanks Richard... is it a a sure thing, that identification of the 26th's adagio with the foolish sinner/God dialogue? The 2032 notes only say that it is "suggested". Apparently Haydn himself couldn't remember which one.

I was thinking about alternatives and - what about the No.22 adagio as another candidate for this conversation, between God and the foolish sinner? It is more of a musical dialogue than the adagio of 26, where both lines are more or less continuous....

[Mal]

Returning to the new Antonini disc, I was pleased to hear on it a performance of Symphony No.3...

This is another symphony where I found Fischer "uninvolved"; I preferred Dorati and Hogwood on utube. Have you compared these with Antonini?

First two minutes of Antonini in no. 26 here:

First impressions are very good, they sound (and look!) involved, and the sound is very beautiful. But it doesn't upstage Ward/NCO (Naxos). Both are better than Fischer, he sounds under-rehearsed and dashed off.

[MickyD]

Just listened to the Bruggen 26. I have to say that personally I am not at all keen on the changes of tempi in the minuet. It doesn't work for me at all, but each to his own. It's been fascinating listening to all these differing versions.

[Mal]

Thanks Richard... is it a a sure thing, that identification of the 26th's adagio with the foolish sinner/God dialogue? The 2032 notes only say that it is "suggested". Apparently Haydn himself couldn't remember which one.

I was thinking about alternatives and - what about the No.22 adagio as another candidate for this conversation, between God and the foolish sinner? It is more of a musical dialogue than the adagio of 26, where both lines are more or less continuous....

Wigmore also suggests that the adagio of 22 is the most likely candidate.

[Richard Barrett]

Thanks Richard... is it a a sure thing, that identification of the 26th's adagio with the foolish sinner/God dialogue?

It isn't a sure thing but I think it's a more likely candidate than 22. Here is Elaine Sisman in an essay entitled "Haydn's Theater Symphonies":

... the Adagio of Symphony no. 26 in D minor ("Lamentatione"), in which a chant melody (a Lamentation of Jeremiah) enters into dialogue with a "frivolous" first-violin line in small note values. Haydn had even used the word "leichtsinnig" to both biographers, to describe the sinner. In the Adagio, the chorale, played in quarternotes by oboe and second violin, is answered by the first violin in sixteenth triplets. The chorale alternates (argues?) with the first violin during the development, and the recapitulation is extensively, and uniquely, recast in the relative minor. Although this theory is fully speculative as Landon's hypothesis about Symphony no. 22 and Kretzschmar's about the recitative in Symphony no. 7 ("Le Midi"), at least Symphony no. 26 is firmly rooted in a religious context, with the Lamentations of Jeremiah themselves almost paradigmatic remonstrances with sinners, and in addition has musical features unusual enough to support the programmatic interpretation.