555324 bk Haydn US 24/6/03 5:16 PM Page 4 Swedish Chamber Orchestra DDD The Swedish Chamber Orchestra, based in the city of Örebro, is the only full-time Scandinavian chamber orchestra. The Örebro Concert Hall, on the Black River in the historic centre of Örebro, is the orchestra’s home. From this HAYDN 8.555324 base it gives over a hundred performances a year divided between subscription concerts and tours, national and international. The rapid development of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, attracting attention from leading Symphonies, Vol. 27 international conductors and soloists, has focused on intensive recording and increasingly on touring. In 1996 the orchestra toured Europe with Barbara Hendricks and Eric Ericson’s Chamber Choir, appearing in 1997 in Spain and Norway, and in 1998 in Germany, Norway and the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC, followed by a tour in Symphonies Nos. 50, 51 and 52 2001 to Germany. Collaboration with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra has established a composer-in-residency for a Swedish composer, Karin Rehnqvist, and a British composer, Sally Beamish. The Swedish Chamber Orchestra Swedish Chamber Orchestra • Béla Drahos has made critically acclaimed recordings for labels such as BIS, Hyperion, Simax and Naxos. Its earlier recording of Kraus symphonies for Naxos (8.553734) was named record of the month in Diapason and was awarded the Cannes Classical Awards prize for best recording of eighteenth century music in 1998. The Principal Conductor of the orchestra since 1997 has been Thomas Dausgaard. Béla Drahos Béla Drahos was born in Hungary in 1955. He started his career as a flautist, winning international competition prizes from the age of seventeen, with awards that include, among many others, the Bartók - Pásztory Prize in 1988. In 1978 he graduated with distinction at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. His concert career has included performances throughout Europe and as far afield as New Zealand. He has embarked on a parallel career as a conductor, completing his studies in Vienna under Karl Österreicher in 1991. Since then he has conducted and recorded for Naxos a broad symphonic repertoire, including some of the Haydn and all the Beethoven Symphonies. 8.555324 4 555324 bk Haydn US 24/6/03 5:16 PM Page 2 Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) und Baucis, for which Haydn provided music, was exposition that later follows. Muted violins, with the Symphony No. 50 in C major • Symphony No. 51 in B flat major performed, its distinctly patriotic dénouement followed lower strings, accompany a solo horn in the E flat major Symphony No. 52 in C minor by fireworks. The occasion seemingly brought a slow movement. The second horn follows the high performance of Haydn’s Symphony No. 48 and it has register melody of his partner with notes at the bottom Joseph Haydn was born in the village of Rohrau in Prince Nicolaus died in 1790 and Haydn found been suggested that Symphony No. 50 might also have of the instrument’s range, before the entry of a solo 1732, the son of a wheelwright. Trained at the choir- himself able to accept an invitation to visit London. been played for the Empress, its first two movements oboe. In the middle section the horn follows the oboe, school of St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, he There he provided music for concert seasons organized derived, perhaps, from the Prologue to Philemon und leading to the amplification by the strings of triplet subsequently spent some years earning a living as best by the violinist-impresario Salomon. A second Baucis, with two additional movements to make up a figuration already briefly heard. The recapitulation he could from teaching and playing the violin or successful visit to London in 1794 and 1795 was complete symphony. The work is, in any case, in allows the second horn a short moment of glory in an keyboard, and was able to profit from association with followed by a return to duty with the Esterházy family, scoring and key, designed for a festive occasion, with accompanying arpeggio. The Menuetto frames a first the old composer Porpora, whose assistant he became. the new head of which had settled principally at the its trumpets and drums. The first movement starts with Trio for strings alone and then a second Trio that makes Haydn’s first appointment was in 1759 as family property in Eisenstadt, where Haydn had started a stately introduction with formal dotted rhythms, fuller use of the pairs of oboes and horns, with the first Kapellmeister to a Bohemian nobleman, Count von his career with them. Much of the year, however, was to leading to a characteristic Allegro, the repeated horn ascending to the very height of its range, and the Morzin, whose kinsman had once served as patron to be spent in Vienna, where Haydn passed his final years, exposition with a shortened second subject, material to second descending to the depths. The symphony ends Vivaldi. This was followed in 1761 by employment as dying in 1809, as the French armies of Napoleon be developed in a central section, before returning in with a rondo, its recurrent principal theme serving as a Vice-Kapellmeister to one of the richest men in the approached the city yet again. recapitulation. The G major slow movement is framework for contrasted episodes, with the horns Empire, Prince Paul Anton Esterházy, succeeded after Haydn lived during the period of the eighteenth entrusted principally to the strings, with the oboes only finally urging the work forward to its conclusion. his death in 1762 by Prince Nicolaus. On the death in century that saw the development of instrumental music marking the recapitulation. The Menuet starts with the Symphony No. 52 in C minor is dated to the same 1766 of the elderly and somewhat obstructive from the age of Bach and Handel to the era of the ascending notes of the C major triad, as in the first period. The first movement opens with a unison figure, Kapellmeister Gregor Werner, who had found much to classical sonata, with its tripartite first-movement form movement. The Trio brings a surprise, starting as it the start of a characteristic Sturm und Drang work. The complain about in the professionalism of his young and and complementary two or three movements, the basis does with the same figure as the Menuet, but moving second subject appears twice and there is a strong figure resented deputy, Haydn succeeded to his position, to now of much instrumental composition. The symphony then to an F major oboe melody, and then to an E major of contrapuntal suggestion, realised in the development. remain in the same employment, nominally at least, for may claim to have become the most important form of conclusion, before the return of the Menuet. The last The violins are muted in the C major slow movement, the rest of his life. orchestral composition and owes a great deal, if not its movement has only one theme, which returns with the with the high C and the E flat horns now replaced by On the completion of the magnificent palace at precise paternity, to Haydn. He first attempted such necessary shifts of key, both in its second appearance, low C instruments. Serenity is interrupted by the same Eszterháza in the Hungarian plains under Prince composition some time before 1759 and wrote his last in the central development, and in the final descending semitone that had added a touch of sinister Nicolaus, Haydn assumed command of an increased symphonies for London in the last decade of the recapitulation. drama to the first movement. The Menuetto brings with musical establishment. Here he had responsibility for century. Symphony No. 51 in B flat major was written in the it a C major Trio of surprising off-beat accentuation. the musical activities of the palace, which included the On 31st August 1773 the Empress Maria Theresa early 1770s, dated to a period between 1771 and 1773. It is followed by a final Presto, the principal theme provision and direction of instrumental music, opera and her court visited Eszterháza. The first day brought a The first subject of the opening movement is introduced by the syncopation of the first and second and music for the theatre, as well as music for the play in the palace theatre, followed the next day by punctuated by the notes of one of the French horns. A violins. Its rapid course is interrupted, in the repeated church. For his patron he provided a quantity of Haydn’s opera L’infedeltà delusa, and in the transition that moves through a dramatic G minor leads second part of the movement, by a sudden silence, chamber music of all kinds, particularly for the Prince’s magnificent ball-room, with its chinoiserie decoration, to a delicately scored second subject, largely shared by before proceeding to five strong chords, followed by own peculiar instrument, the baryton, a bowed string a masked ball, at which Haydn and his musicians first and second violins. The central development the near unanimity of the strongly stated final bars. instrument with sympathetic strings that could also be appeared dressed in what was described as Chinese includes a particularly deceptive false recapitulation in plucked. fashion. On the third day a marionette opera, Philemon E flat, anticipating the true return to the material of the Keith Anderson 8.555324 2 3 8.555324 555324 bk Haydn US 24/6/03 5:16 PM Page 2 Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) und Baucis, for which Haydn provided music, was exposition that later follows. Muted violins, with the Symphony No. 50 in C major • Symphony No.