Daniel-Ben Pinaar: My Haydn Top Five
During the autumn and winter of 2020, I immersed myself in the musical universe of the Haydn Piano Sonatas – one of the most pleasurable experiences of my life. Within the rich panorama of the whole set each Sonata forms a little world of its own, both varied and coherent.
Read more…From my own cycle: Sonata in D major XVI:24
Here is one of my favourites – an open, sprung first movement with plenty of registral and timbral games to delight the ear; a slow movement where passages of the most exquisite tenderness are framed by decorous 18th-century gestures; and a brief, but knotty finale with some humorous ‘wrong-footing’. A curious mixture of elements, and yet it all ‘works’ together.
Horowitz – Sonata in F major Hob XVI:23
In the recordings I site here, each artist brings a highly distinct aesthetic and temperament to Haydn. More than expanding our notion of what Haydn's music encompasses, these performances can ‘become Haydn’ just as much as the notes themselves. With this Horowitz performance, we have the sense of enormous resources and explosive energy being purposefully contained and condensed. The combined effect of every note being so alive, electric even, and the discernment and tastefulness of the ideas, makes for a kind of epicurean experience.
Lili Kraus – Sonata in D major Hob. XVI:37
Of the artists I chose here, Lili Kraus is the one who leaves the strongest impression of being someone for whom this kind of late-18thC keyboard music is their vernacular. In this highly characterised playing, every nuance feels idiomatic and natural, but also personal.
Pogorelich – Sonata in D major Hob XVI:19
The two remaining solo piano recordings I chose are both uncompromisingly iconoclastic, but in very different ways. I feel they are also a sincere extension of the highly individual personalities of these players. In Pogorelich's compelling reading of this expansive work, every idea is neatly encamped, every rhythmic shape, every accent and texture is hyper-deliberate, taut and striking. The perfection of the execution combines with the limpid recorded sound for an experience that is at once stimulating and sensuous, as well as feeling at times emotionally alienating in true modernist fashion. Fascinating.
Glenn Gould – Sonata in C major Hob. XVI:48
Somebody listening to the first (slow) movement of this recording will be struck by the tension between the notorious 'x-ray' Gould articulation on the surface and the breadth and intensity with which the musical line is carried - the underlying ebb-and-flow of the music, even through the many silences, strikes me as late Romantic even! In the second movement, Gould really lets rip and the energy is explosive. Gould may not be everybody's cup of tea when it comes to the Viennese classics, but he definitely has an affinity with late Haydn.
Beaux Arts – Piano Trio in E major Hob XV:28
My 'bonus recording' is not of a solo piano work. Those interested in Haydn's piano writing have a magical treasure trove for further exploration of the Piano Trios. This E major work with its enchanting opening boasts a grippingly austere slow movement. I clearly recall how moved I was when I first heard it. The playing here is what one could describe as aristocratic: very much of its time, and self-effacing up to a point, but also sensitive, beautifully disciplined, and utterly committed.