Nadia Reisenberg The Acclaimed Haydn Recordings (2 CD Set) Haydn’s Piano Works “I acknowledge with pleasure the desire of many music lovers to own a complete edition of my piano compositions,” wrote Franz Joseph Haydn in 1799, “and I shall see to it that in this collection no work which wrongly bears my name will be included.” The collection he referred to was subsequently pub- lished in twelve volumes, between 1800 and 1806 under the enticing, if erroneous title “Oeuvres com- pletes.” Actually, Haydn was the chief culprit in that misnomer, since by his own admission, he not only removed spurious compositions, but deleted as well “those works of my early youth which are not worth preserving.” Later generations, of course, were not at all ready to discard any of the master’s works so cavalierly, and Franz Joseph Haydn the number of Sonatas which indeed comprise Haydn’s “complete works” has been revised upwards on several occasions. The original 1800-06 edition contained thirty-four piano sonatas. A collec- tion edited by Hugo Riemann, and published in London in 1895, added five more. In 1918, the now standard Karl Päsler edition listed fifty-two sonatas. Nor is the accounting yet complete: in 1966, a newly published Vienna Urtext edition has upped the total again to sixty-two (including a fragment of a sonata previously considered lost, and several scores freshly discovered in Viennese and Moravian archives). The miscellaneous pieces by Haydn did not fare as well. Many were lost and less than twenty works are extant. Of these, Nadia Reisenberg’s recital assembles four sets of variations and two superb miniatures – the Fantasia and the Capriccio – on which alone Haydn’s reputation as a piano composer could safely rest. Since Haydn considered his keyboard sonatas to be among his minor compositions, he took little care to document them for posterity. The Sonata No.13 in G Major (Hob.XVI:6) was – 2 – published with five other sonatas in 1766 when the composer was thirty-four years old and in the service of Prince Nicholas Esterhazy. The Sonata No.13 in G Major, for Haydn still an early work, follows the style current in Vienna in the middle seventeen hundreds. In some editions it is entitled “Partita” and in others “Divertimento.” The opening Allegro presents three melodies in succession accompanied congenially by the left hand; it could well be considered as a violin solo with clavier accompaniment and, in fact, Haydn arranged many of his keyboard sonatas for that combination. The second movement is a graceful Minuetto with a central Trio in the minor; the minuet was always a favorite of Haydn’s and, although he later speeded it up to almost scherzo proportions, in this early sonata it still maintains the gallant rhythms of the dance. The Adagio which follows reminds one of a Bach Arioso: a slow ornate melody above chords. The sonata ends with a fourth movement – Allegro molto – in two parts, each repeated in the manner of Scarlatti. The Fantasia in C Major (Hob.XVII:4), composed in 1789, in some editions is also called “Capriccio.” Biographer Rosemary Hughes calls this work “bewilderingly free in structure,” while Karl Geiringer could “hear in this piece the tone of violins and double basses, of horns and flutes; moreover a rapid crossing of the hands, the arpeggios, and the distribution of passages between the two hands exhibit the composer’s concern for purely pianistic devices. The effect that Haydn achieved by holding notes in the bass until they die away (tenuto intanto finche non si pente più il sono) is rather notable. This fantasia was written by a master who exploited the possibilities of piano technique in transcribing ideas of an essentially orchestral nature.” The marking is simply Presto. After an interval in B flat there are two long stretches of profligate modulation around a central sec- tion in A. The prodigal C comes home abruptly, and with even more telling effect than it had made in taking leave many pages earlier. The Sonata No.62 in E-flat Major (Hob.XVI:52) was composed in 1794. It affirms its stature with the very opening chords – dramatic punctuations that set the stage for an unraveling of music in the grand style. This is, perhaps the most adventurous of all of the sonatas – with its extraordi- nary harmonic design, its forays into near-romantic expressionism, its nobility of spirit. Its key rela- tionships are remarkable, not only in terms of the striking modulations within movements, but also in the fact that the middle Adagio is daringly cast in E major – poles apart, harmonically speaking, from the outer movements in E flat. This slow movement stands as well among the loftiest exam- ples of Haydn’s art – it contains music of grandeur, profundity and extraordinary warmth. By con- trast, the Finale is a whirlwind Presto, brimming over with elan and that zesty impertinence which marks Haydn at his most ingratiating. The Tema con Variazioni in C Major (Hob.XVII:5) of 1791 permits itself a modicum – 3 – of temerity. The dolce theme, restrained and lovely, is set forth Andante. In the first four chapters that follow, the story does not change harmonically. With Variation V we are plunged suddenly into the dark waters of C minor, thence to E flat, and so forth until, at the end, we find ourselves poised in G. Variation VI, not unnaturally, is strongly tonic. The great innovator is not ashamed to give the last word to a C major chord. The Sonata No.50 in D Major (Hob. XVI:37), published in 1780, is a highly expressive work. By 1780 Haydn had acquired an international reputation. The King of Spain had sent him a jewelled snuffbox, Lord Abingdon urged him to visit England for a season, Ferdinand IV of Naples desired to see him in Italy, and the future Empress of Russia insisted that he instruct her in singing. Haydn, however, was ham- pered absolutely by his position with Prince Esterhazy, who Nadia Reisenberg, 1920s had no intention of allowing his Kapellmeister to leave his estate to entertain anyone else. The most that Haydn was granted were occasional short visits to Vienna where he was heralded by an intrigued group of lower nobility and wealthy middle class patrons, among whom were the sisters Auenbrugger. It was for these ladies that Haydn wrote his Sonata No.50 in D Major. Concerning the sisters he wrote to his publisher Artaria: “The approval of the Misses von Auenbrugger is most important to me, because both their technique and their genuine understanding of the art of music are equal to the greatest masters’. Both deserve to become known throughout Europe by music published in their honor.” The sonata is constructed in three movements. The first, Allegro con brio, light and rapid as it is, progresses by changes in mood rather than by the introduction of new material. The music is uni- fied and seems to belong on the piano. The middle Largo is rather like a sarabande and one of the most unsettled slow movements in the writing of a composer who was famous for his moving ada- gios. The mood is intensified by the absence of a pause before the final Presto: a good-humored movement, but by no means merely showy. The Arietta con Variazioni in A Major (Hob.XVII:2) dates from 1771. It has come down to us with nineteen variations, although the Haydn-Elssler thematic index lists twenty, the Oeuvres com- pletes eighteen, and Artaria only twelve. The Landesbibliothek in Weimar has a score with twenty, – 4 – but not including the No.10 in the Artaria sequence; the minimum total of variations composed is therefore twenty-one. Nineteen is today accepted as standard, however, two having been killed by the composer according to scholarly consensus. Stylistically the work tends to simulate the grace- fully galant manner of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, who was Haydn’s hero-prototype. The dulcet, folk-like theme is announced Allegretto quasi Andantino. At no time from then forward is there any departing the tonic. Several of the variations are especially delightful: III for its darting sixteenth patterns, V for its crossed-hands cleverness, VIII for its elfin scherzando character, X for its fantas- tic prophecy of Petrouchka, XI for its canonic by-play, XV for its feathery leggierro, the usually miss- ing XVII for its minuetishly Mozartean ways, the final XIX for its Ländler charm. The Sonata No.53 in e minor (Hob.XVI:34) is dated January 15, 1784. Haydn was then under the spell of a then new, mostly literary, movement known as Sturm und Drang. (The official trans- lation of this term is “Storm and Stress,” however, a perhaps better translation of this term might be “Storm and Urge”.) The language of the opening movement, marked Presto, gives us a glimpse into the future, music that is hovering over the borderline which separates the Here from the Beyond, the darkness, the brooding, the questioning, and in the second movement (Adagio ) the long and lonely meditation. The last movement (Molto vivace) is, on the strength of its theme alone, one continued urging question, gaining in urgency as it speeds along. The closing phrases of this movement, reveal Haydn as the unerring – still classical – master of equilibrium. Their sheer grace- fulness seems to turn the entire question into a lofty play, so that the work’s final chord releases us with a smile. The Capriccio in G Major (“Acht Sauschneider müssen sein”) (Hob.XVII:1) is a longish rondo, originally written in 1765.