A belated thank you for your support, Antonio.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Joseph Haydn - Piano Sonatas; Fantasia; Andante; Adagio (Alfred Brendel)


Information

Composer: Joseph Haydn

CD1:
  • (01-03) Piano Sonata No. 20 in C minor, Hob. XVI/20
  • (04-06) Piano Sonata No. 49 in E flat major, Hob. XVI/49
CD2:
  • (01-02) Piano Sonata No. 48 in C major, Hob. XVI/48
  • (03-04) Piano Sonata No. 51 in D major, Hob. XVI/51
  • (05-07) Piano Sonata No. 50 in C major, Hob. XVI/50
CD3:
  • (01-03) Piano Sonata No. 34 in E minor, Hob. XVI/34
  • (04-06) Piano Sonata No. 32 in B minor, Hob. XVI/32
  • (07-08) Piano Sonata No. 42 in D major, Hob. XVI/42
  • (09)      Fantasia in C major, Hob. XVII/4
  • (10)      Adagio in F major, Hob. XVII/9
CD4:
  • (01-03) Piano Sonata No. 52 in E-flat major, Hob. XVI/52
  • (04-05) Piano Sonata No. 40 in G major, Hob. XVI/40
  • (06-08) Piano Sonata No. 37 in D major, Hob. XVI/37
  • (09)      Andante con variazioni in F minor, Hob. XVII/6

Alfred Brendel, piano
Date: 1979-1985
Label: Philips
http://www.deccaclassics.com/us/cat/4166432


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Review

Last December, when writing about the fourth of these recordings, I suggested they were to be counted among the best Alfred Brendel has given us in the last five years. Listening to all four on CD has been a treat. The presentation of the collection is good too, if your eyesight is up to the demands a CD booklet imposes, and Monika Mollering's essay ( ''Images of Haydn'') and notes on the individual sonatas and pieces are a stimulus to enhanced enjoyment of the remarkable qualities of the music. It takes a great player to do justice to its variety, its richness of expression, its wit and its sophistication of form and structure, as Mollering says. Brendel's steady illumination of Haydn is a delight. He is at once a scrupulous and a robust interpreter, setting out from a careful reading of the text to seek the most vivid projection of Haydn's ideas—and I admire especially the way he allows boldness, even daring, to play a part in the search. The playing is alive with a feeling of spontaneity and the capricious side of Haydn is served as generously as the rest of him. ''The perceptiveness and musicality of his playing may well be a revelation even to those who know that Haydn's keyboard sonatas, still shamefully neglected, are every bit as good as Mozart's'', was a comment of RG's about the third disc (11/83). On the second (8/85), RF thought Brendel revealed the E minor as ''one of Haydn's very greatest sonatas''. And about the last sonata, the E flat, on the most recent issue (12/86), I said I could imagine Beethoven relishing this performance of it. In sum, marvellous music, its marvels made brilliantly manifest.

And the recording? Well, variable and not without its faults. In a Gramophone interview in January (page 985) Louis Lortie was saying that Brendel's records rarely give us a full representation of him because producers lose his special type of projection through miking him too close. I know what he means. Here, however, in music which wasn't conceived for large spaces, I find the close proximity of the sound—as it is on three discs of the four—generally acceptable. It's best, I think, on disc No. 2 and least good on the third; there it struck me as dry, altogether too clinical in aspect for the opening of the two-movement Sonata in C, and in general uncomfortably close throughout. You are indeed very close to the pianist as well as the music. I am not myself greatly bothered by quiet singalong and 'occasional extraneous noises from artist', as a recording engineer might note, but the phenomenon will be most unwelcome to some. On the more recent issues the toning of the piano is idiosyncratic too: no doubt Brendel wanted it this way? I note finally that the oldest recording is analogue, with a quite different quality of sound to the rest—more distantly balanced. less analytical, softer edged. The LP, as I remember it, was satisfactory but the CD worries me (in the C minor Sonata particularly) by a percussive quality which is insistent as a sort of note-against-note counterpoint to the true sound—the mechanical action of the piano, I suspect, picked up by one close microphone and allowed to figure too prominently in the final mix.

-- Stephen Plaistow, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/Haydn-11-Piano-Sonatas-Joseph/dp/B00000E36W
http://www.amazon.com/Haydn-Piano-Sonatas-Joseph/dp/B001JJX7ME
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Haydn-Piano-Sonatas-DECCA-Originals/dp/B001JJX7ME


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Joseph Haydn (31 March 1732 – 31 May 1809) was a prominent and prolific Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio and his contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet". Haydn's work was central to the development of what came to be called sonata form. At the time of his death, aged 77, he was one of the most celebrated composers in Europe. Haydn was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a teacher of Beethoven, and the older brother of composer Michael Haydn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Haydn

***

Alfred Brendel (born 5 January 1931 in Wiesenberg, Czechoslovakia) is an Austrian pianist, poet and author, particularly for his performances of Mozart, Schubert, Schoenberg, and especially Beethoven. Brendel never had much formal piano training and was largely self-taught. He gave his first public recital at the age of 17, made his first recording at 21, then went on to make a string of other records, including three complete sets of the Beethoven piano sonatas, and was the first performer to record the complete solo piano works of Beethoven. Brendel gave his final concert on 20 February 2008 at Carnegie Hall, New York.

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7 comments:

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    Replies
    1. booklet
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