Haydn’s Keyboard Sonatas: 17-21 July

[BBMmk2]

Great post Waldo, as it does add perspective. Perhaps if you have the time and inclination you could mention which of the Sonatas, in your opinion, are most worth investigating? Or perhaps I should stick with the ones played by the Pianists, such as Brendel and Richter, who have dabbled in Haydn?

Agreed, RFG, very good post Waldo. One of my favourites is No.52. Still like it a lot, as I played this too.

[waldo]

Great post Waldo, as it does add perspective. Perhaps if you have the time and inclination you could mention which of the Sonatas, in your opinion, are most worth investigating?

Be very glad to do so later today. Have to nap now to recover from an excruciating shopping trip to rain-sodden Swansea.......

[waldo]

For further investigation, I would suggest three minor sonatas: C minor (H. HVI No 20), the B minor (No. 32), and the E minor (No.34). All of these are absolute gems and easily stand comparison with Mozart and Beethoven. Brendel calls the C minor the "first great C minor sonata". I am using the Hob numbers, by the way, as these are on my CDs. I don't really understand the system, but I don't understand the Landon system either. In the Hoboken system there are 52 numbered sonatas, and in the Landon there are 62.

For major, I would try 52 in E flat (as BBM rightly recommends) and 50 in C major. These are mature, sophisticated large-scale works - a little more genial and humorous than the sturm und drang of the earlier minor works, but intensely moving in the slower movements. The last 5 sonatas (48-52) are all terrific and are often recorded as a kind of set, but 50 and 52 stand out as flagship pieces, if only for their scale and the broader canvas.

Some things to look out for if you want further encouragement.......As with Beethoven, movements are tightly organised and built around small motivic units. There aren't really "melodies" in the Schubertian sense, though that doesn't mean they aren't full of melodic interest! There are passages of fierce contrapuntal intensity (finale of B minor), beautiful wandering aria-like adagios (No.50, 52, the C minor), "humour" (the finale of 50 is full of jokes - wrong keys, botched cadences, ideas that fizzle out as if the composer had lost interest, stop-start hesitancies that gather steam only to hit a brick wall, outright wrong notes, silly modulations etc), and a kind of consoling, humanistic, warmth that is unique to Haydn (probably more evident in the later major works).

[David-G]

The last three sonatas (Landon 60/1/2, or Hob. XVI/50/1/2) were written by Haydn in London, taking advantage of the possibilities he discerned in Broadwood pianos, which were very different from the instruments he had known in Vienna. The Broadwood factory and showroom in Great Pulteney Street was just a few yards from the house where Haydn had lived in his first visit to London, so it is inconceivable that he would not have been a frequent visitor to Broadwoods. Waldo has written eloquently about these sonatas. A couple of years ago I heard Hob. XVI/50 (C major) played in concert at Finchcocks on a square piano (a Clementi of about 1820), and was very struck by it. This inspired me to try to become reasonably proficient in playing this sonata on my Broadwood square of 1804, and after 18 months I am now able to play the first and last movements passably - which is very gratifying. I am amazed and struck by how much more rewarding it is to play this music on an instrument of the period. Close attention to details of phrasing, articulation, staccato etc becomes absolutely critical. A challenge, but a very rewarding challenge.

I also love No. 52. At present that is rather beyond my capabilities. Possibly a challenge for the future.

Incidentally, Haydn was so enamoured of the English grand pianos that when he returned to Vienna in 1795 he took his Longman and Broderip grand. This instrument has been identified in Vienna in recent times by Robbins Landon, and is now in the Cobbe Collection in Hatchlands Park in Surrey. I went to a most enjoyable concert there a few weeks ago - Emma Kirkby was singing English songs of the 1790s by Haydn and other composers, accompanied on the Longman and Broderip. You can see the piano, and hear an extract played on it, here:

http://www.cobbecollection.co.uk/collection/42-haydns-grand-piano-2/

[David-G]

The pianist at the Finchcocks concert, Martina Kazmierczak, also gave a lecture on the relevance of the Principles of Rhetoric to the playing of Haydn. I have just spotted a book on this topic by Tom Beghin and Sander Goldberg, "Haydn and the Performance of Rhetoric", which I think would be very interesting. This is the description:

"Haydn is the last major composer whose music was regularly discussed by his contemporaries in terms derived from the classical tradition of rhetoric. Within a generation of his death, that discourse had fallen from favor, but the historical relationship between Haydn and the rhetorical tradition endured. In this volume, a distinguished group of contributors in fields from classics to literature to musicology restores the rhetorical model to prominence and shows what can be achieved by returning to the idea of music as a rhetorical process. An accompanying DVD, specially designed for this project, presents performances and illustrations keyed to the book's chapters, making musicological arguments accessible to nonspecialists and advancing additional arguments of its own through the medium of performance. The volume thus reaches beyond musicology to enrich and complicate the larger debate over rhetoric's role in eighteenth-century culture."

[MickyD]

The last three sonatas (Landon 60/1/2, or Hob. XVI/50/1/2) were written by Haydn in London, taking advantage of the possibilities he discerned in Broadwood pianos, which were very different from the instruments he had known in Vienna. The Broadwood factory and showroom in Great Pulteney Street was just a few yards from the house where Haydn had lived in his first visit to London, so it is inconceivable that he would not have been a frequent visitor to Broadwoods. Waldo has written eloquently about these sonatas. A couple of years ago I heard Hob. XVI/50 (C major) played in concert at Finchcocks on a square piano (a Clementi of about 1820), and was very struck by it. This inspired me to try to become reasonably proficient in playing this sonata on my Broadwood square of 1804, and after 18 months I am now able to play the first and last movements passably - which is very gratifying. I am amazed and struck by how much more rewarding it is to play this music on an instrument of the period. Close attention to details of phrasing, articulation, staccato etc becomes absolutely critical. A challenge, but a very rewarding challenge.

I also love No. 52. At present that is rather beyond my capabilities. Possibly a challenge for the future.

Incidentally, Haydn was so enamoured of the English grand pianos that when he returned to Vienna in 1795 he took his Longman and Broderip grand. This instrument has been identified in Vienna in recent times by Robbins Landon, and is now in the Cobbe Collection in Hatchlands Park in Surrey. I went to a most enjoyable concert there a few weeks ago - Emma Kirkby was singing English songs of the 1790s by Haydn and other composers, accompanied on the Longman and Broderip. You can see the piano, and hear an extract played on it, here:

http://www.cobbecollection.co.uk/col...grand-piano-2/

Lucky you, David - not just going to those concerts, but to own a Broadwood square. I would love to have one!

[richardfinegold]

Thanks, Waldo, David, BBM. Will pull the big Brendel and Richter boxes off the shelf this week and do some Haydn immersion

[waldo]

A couple of years ago I heard Hob. XVI/50 (C major) played in concert at Finchcocks on a square piano (a Clementi of about 1820), and was very struck by it. This inspired me to try to become reasonably proficient in playing this sonata on my Broadwood square of 1804, and after 18 months I am now able to play the first and last movements passably - which is very gratifying. I am amazed and struck by how much more rewarding it is to play this music on an instrument of the period. Close attention to details of phrasing, articulation, staccato etc becomes absolutely critical. A challenge, but a very rewarding challenge.

Well, that sonata is a bit too hard for me - even with 18 months.........I can play the finale to No.49, which is tremendous fun, but that is about all I can manage as far as the "late" sonatas go. Quite a few of the earlier ones are very playable, however, so I always feel a special gratitude to Haydn for this. I read somewhere, not sure where now, that he himself had trouble playing with the later ones and couldn't do them proper justice. Unlike Mozart and Beethoven, he wasn't a virtuoso or anywhere close to that standard.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well - having said that I don't really know Haydn's works for piano, the first programme started with a movement that I used to play! I didn't know who the performer was, but I was thinking it a bit "thumpy" in the Left Hand (I didn't play it very much worse in this respect!) so when I heard that it was John McCabe, I understood the negative comments voiced on this Thread.

A relief to move onto the clavichord performance that followed - lovely sound, lively performance. It also made me wonder if anyone has transcribed/arranged any of these works for guitar - this one sounded as if it would fit the instrument superbly.

And, again, I greatly like the format (also followed in last week's programmes) of surrounding the central theme of the week with other works from around the same time. Not to mention the usual "I didn't know that!" factlettes - the chair that played a flute when you sat on it ...

[doversoul1]

This has been yet another excellent Composer of the Week. It would have been good if there had been more performances on forte piano but that may be asking too much. Donald Macleod really is a superb radio broadcaster. I thought his introduction of Haydn in the first programme could easily be that of Donald Macleod.

[verismissimo]

Lucky you, David - not just going to those concerts, but to own a Broadwood square. I would love to have one!

I got to know Haydn's piano music from John McCabe's recordings as they came out, together with Martin Cooper's superb notes - are they in the CD box? doubt it. Then over the years I got to know John quite well and I was given a fine square Broadwood of 1790 by my dear mother-in-law Jill, which I had restored by Lucy Coad.

John had always made a point of preferring to use a modern piano in his performances of Haydn, but he agreed to come and give an intimate performance at our cottage with an audience of 30 or so.

He and his wife Monica arrived and he was quite taken aback when he saw the instrument. Although I had been clear from the outset that it was a square, he was somehow expecting a full fortepiano. Having overcome that small matter, he settled down to get used to the instrument. Aside from the fact that the keys are fractionally narrower than on a modern instrument, the touch quite different, the biggest problem that emerged was that the sustaining pedal is placed adjacent to the left foot.

Well, after some 90 minutes, our guests arrived and this is what he played for them:

Beethoven: Rondo in C, Op 51 No 1 (1796)
GF Pinto: Sonata in A, Op 3 No 2 (1802-3)
John McCabe: Afternoons and Afterwards (1981)
Haydn: Sonata in D, No 39, Hob 24 (1773)

It was altogether a delight. Why the McCabe suite? I had asked him if he might include something of his own in the programme. His immediate response was that there was nothing suitable. 'What about your little suite for children, Afternoons and Afterwards?' I proposed. It fitted perfectly in a memorable afternoon. Sunday 14 May 2006.

[MickyD]

What a lovely story, verismissimo, thanks for sharing that. I wish there were someone in my family who would lavish a Broadwood square on me!

[verismissimo]

What a lovely story, verismissimo, thanks for sharing that. I wish there were someone in my family who would lavish a Broadwood square on me!

Thanks MD. Jill had inherited the Broadwood from her own mother. It had been bought from a pub in Kent in the 1930s for £5 and was to all intents and purposes (and very unusually) unchanged from the day it left Broadwood's factory in Soho in 1790. We still have the original strings (but not actually attached to the instrument!)

Over the years, we've had a mix of modernists and authenticists come and give intimate recitals on it. Not all have been as memorable as John McCabe's.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What a lovely story, verismissimo, thanks for sharing that.

I wish there were someone in my family who would lavish a Broadwood square on me!

I fear such generosity would be wasted on my fingers. (I might give a recital "as memorable as John McCabe's", but not in the way verism probably had in mind!)

[verismissimo]

BTW I enthusiastically endorse vinty's support for Christine Schornsheim's set. It includes not only the sonatas, but also the fantasias, variations etc on 14 CDs, and she plays a variety of harpsichords, clavichords and early pianos, including a Broadwood Grand Piano of 1804.