101 Classical Music CDs

Today we will cover listener notes to Haydn's Symphony #40 and Symphony #50, the final two works on this exceptional CD of four Haydn symphonies. Haydn was a giant of the classical era of classical music, and if you're interested in getting a representative sample of his music, you should seriously consider buying today's recording, as well as a recording of either his "London" Symphonies, or his "Paris" Symphonies. Let me just repeat for emphasis from last post that the four symphonies on this CD are performed brilliantly, and nearly flawlessly, by the Heidelberger Sinfoniker. ********************** Thomas Fey and the Heidelberger Sinfoniker Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 39, 34, 40, 50 Hanssler Classic, 2001/2003 ********************** Listener Notes for Haydn's Symphony Nos. #40 and #50: Symphony #40: 1) 30 seconds into the first movement of #40 (and it happens again at 1:38 when the initial theme is repeated) there's a an ...

I've mentioned before how I had never really appreciated Haydn before starting this blog. I had always thought of his music as rigid, highly structured and filled with more ornamentation than emotion. ********************** Thomas Fey and the Heidelberger Sinfoniker Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 39, 34, 40, 50 Hanssler Classic, 2001/2003 ********************** This batch of four Haydn symphonies puts the lie to those assumptions just like all my other Haydn CDs . Haydn did amazing, facetious, challenging and even shocking things with the symphony. He was every bit the flexible risk taker that Mozart was, despite that era's relatively strict sense what the structure and format of a symphony should be. And this CD of the Heidelberger Sinfoniker, under the direction of Thomas Fey, is an exceptional performance across the board. There is hardly a mistake or off-key note in the entire CD, a particularly significant achievement as this recording was done with peri...

We return to papa Haydn for three more of his "London" Symphonies. We've already covered three symphonies ( #94 , #100 and #101 ), and with this post we'll finally finish off this two-CD collection of six symphonies from one of the most fruitful periods of Haydn's life. ********************** Sir Colin Davis and the Concertgebouw Orchestra Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Haydn: 6 "London" Symphonies (Nos. 94, 100, 101, 96, 103 and 104) Philips, 1977/2001 ********************** A couple of general comments first and then I'll get right into each individual symphony. First, the performance quality of the second disc in this two-CD set is noticeably poorer than the first; shockingly so, given the dearth of mistakes in disc one. There are flubbed notes, outright missed notes, a high-school caliber violin duet--and that's just my count from Symphony #96. Please keep in mind, however, that these mistakes will go completely unnoticed by most listeners. Furt...

Going through each of these six London Symphonies (after today, we'll have finished three of them) has been a wonderful experience. I can't believe I went this long through life and, until recently , never really listened to Haydn's symphonic works. ********************** Sir Colin Davis and the Concertgebouw Orchestra Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Haydn: 6 "London" Symphonies (Nos. 94, 100, 101, 96, 103 and 104) Philips, 1977/2001 ********************** In fact, when I was a student, my limited familiarity with Haydn quickly morphed into contempt after playing his Trumpet Concerto a few hundred times too many at auditions for various All-State and All-County music competitions. Unfortunately, even the best music doesn't age well after countless repetitions. But what a mistake I made generalizing from the fact that I got sick of this one work! Just like with my initial, trumpet-centric impression of Mozart , I had no idea what I was missing. Yet again, this blog...

Today we continue our journey through six of Haydn's London Symphonies with a close listen to Symphony #100, nicknamed The Military Symphony. ********************** Sir Colin Davis and the Concertgebouw Orchestra Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Haydn: 6 "London" Symphonies (Nos. 94, 100, 101, 96, 103 and 104) Philips, 1977/2001 ********************** One of the unexpected joys of classical music is that it gives a window into the (often amusingly dainty) tastes and conventions of life hundreds of years ago. Modern listeners hearing Haydn's #100 will hear a fairly sedate symphony, complete with some modestly imposing martial-sounding touches, including triangles, cymbals and percussion not typically used in that era's symphonic works. But this symphony was not thought of as "sedate" in its time. In fact, a contemporary of Haydn used the phrase "a hellish road to war" to describe this symphony, a phrase that would no doubt seem impossibly quaint to mode...

We've already talked about how Haydn's London Symphonies should be a foundation item in any beginner's classical music collection . Over a series of posts, we'll cover six of these twelve delightful symphonies from a Philips CD recording of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra. ********************** Sir Colin Davis and the Concertgebouw Orchestra Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) Haydn: 6 "London" Symphonies (Nos. 94, 100, 101, 96, 103 and 104) Philips, 1977/2001 ********************** Don't worry which of the London Symphonies to buy. They're all excellent and accessible to novice classical music listeners, and yet they contain beautiful passages and complex themes and melodies that bear repeated listens. Better still, these symphonies are all quite brief, with the average symphony lasting around 25 minutes, and with movements lasting anywhere from four to eight minutes. Perfect for listening during a commute, or better still, in place of a content-free s...

Beginning classical music enthusiasts might look at this post and wonder, "Symphony #87? How the heck could this guy have written 87 symphonies? Beethoven only wrote nine!" ********************** Herbert von Karajan and the Berliner Philharmoniker Haydn (1732-1809) Haydn: 6 "Paris" Symphonies, #82-87 (1785-6) Deutsche Grammophon, 1981 ********************** Actually, Haydn wrote 104 symphonies. But the symphony of Haydn's era was quite a different animal from the more serious and extended symphony of the Beethoven era. And in many ways Beethoven ruined things for everybody that came after him. After Beethoven, the entire notion of a symphony took on such a seriousness and a gravity that many great composers following Beethoven labored under his shadow. Brahms lacked the confidence even to attempt composing a symphony until late in his life. Beethoven had said all that needed to be said, and even the world's best composers lacked the audacity to say anything...