Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Symphony No. 36 in E flat
Symphony No. 16 in B flat
Violin Concerto No. 1 in C
Symphony No. 13 in D
Kammerorchester Basel/Giovanni Antonini
rec. 2022. Don Bosco, Basel, Switzerland 
Haydn 2032 Volume 17
Alpha Classics 1146 [73]

The Joseph Haydn Stiftung of Basel and Alpha Classics reach volume 17 in their ongoing cycle of Haydn symphonies. Each release has had a programme or theme, and Haydn’s works have sometimes shared the billing with other composers, often contemporaries. This time, the works are all by Haydn. Antonini writes in the booklet that his theme is to consider how in the 1760s, the audience’s reaction to the music and their active involvement with it, even during the performance, was markedly different to what we experience in the concert hall today. Haydn would often, turn around and make remarks to the audience to “look out for this” or “watch what’s coming next”. Musicians like Haydn and Mozart were spurred on by applause in situ as the music was still going on. They actively wrote to entice this practice sometimes.

The title of the disc “Per il Luigi” relates to the inclusion of the Violin Concerto No. 1 in C that Haydn wrote in the early 1760s for the leader of the Esterházy orchestra at Eisenstadt, the Italian Luigi Tomasini. Both Haydn and Tomasini were appointed to the court orchestra in 1761 by Prince Paul Anton and they worked together there for decades. They became great friends. Haydn also wrote parts in his music for other colleagues he was close to as well. Cellist Jospeh Weigl and flautist Franz Sigl are a couple who have little memorials enshrined in the works on this new disc.

We begin with Symphony No. 36 in E flat, written for Paul Anton who was to die in March 1762. The work is conventionally arranged and scored for a pair of oboes and horns and the normal string complement. As we have become accustomed to in this series, conductor Giovanni Antonini draws some glorious and exciting playing from his Swiss band. The recording is spacious, and the sound is warm and vibrant. The horns and oboes come through really well in the outer movements, especially. Strings are ever light and play responsively to dynamics and accents. They line up in a 4/4/2/2/2 formation of only fourteen in total, matching what Haydn had on the Esterházy stage of the day. Violins are split in this work and the others on the disc, but the separation is natural and not so obviously wide that you notice it. In the adagio Haydn writes for solo violin and cello: Luigi and Joseph, who get to duet to bass accompaniment with a ritornello contrasting idea. It is a lovely opener and Kammerorchester Basel prove great advocates of this sunny symphony.

Next is Symphony No. 16 in B flat, another work from that era, possibly even a little earlier. The allegro is an example of Haydn’s ability to work with just one principal theme symphonically. He does this masterfully. The slow movement is a strings only job again. Another solo assignment for Weigl takes the form of him playing an octave below the violin line, all muted. It is a strange sound, repetitive, yet stately and not unpleasant. The finale is a merry old galop, presto and sportingly put over here by these thoughtful musicians. There is no minuet in Number 16.

I was really looking forward to hearing the Violin Concerto No.1 in C as I feel it is an underrated work, and I have always had a fondness for it. As a collector of old records and an aficionado of discographies I can reveal that whilst in the days of 78s there were no recordings of any of the three symphonies on this CD, there were in fact four versions of the Violin Concerto available in the catalogues to record buyers around 1950. Michèle Auclair made it for French HMV in the war with Jacques Thibaud holding the baton no less. Bartók’s first great love, Stefi Geyer, recorded it with Swiss musicians under Paul Sacher for Columbia (a rare set that I have never heard). The great Szymon Goldberg set it down at Abbey Road with the Philharmonia under Susskind on six sides for Parlophone and it was available on an import from American Columbia with Isaac Stern, too.

After such a great start on records the work rather waned and now it is rare for top fiddle players to bother with it. Isabelle Faust did a splendid version in her youth and baroque specialists Rachel Podger, Giuliano Carmignola and Théotime Langlois de Swarte have all recorded the concerto. I have all those records and so I was keen to hear how Dmitry Smirnov would fare. The booklet doesn’t give him a biographical note, but I know he was born in Russia and turned thirty last year. He plays with the Kammerorchester Basel, with whom he made a disc of Lalo concerti, released in 2023. There was also an earlier CD of him in solo works on the First Hand Records label.

Smirnov plays in a light understated and unshowy manner. The first movement is written to accentuate the virtuosity of Tomasini, with plenty of double stopping and rapid ornamentation in the higher registers. I do wish Smirnov had been a little fuller toned in places. He sounds too much like one of the section (which of course he is) and I crave a more heroic timbre in places. He gets a little ahead of the beat in places and the cadenza he chooses would not be my pick either. In the famous song-like second movement his sound is too small and wispy. This is a serenade with a lovely pizzicato accompaniment that should be sung from the heart, and I didn’t catch this in his undoubtedly sincere reading. His most successful movement is the finale. Antonini sets up a lively pace and Smirnov delights in his quick runs and sparkling flashes. Again though, his feathery sound, even if historically informed, will not be to everyone’s taste.

The disc concludes with Haydn’s Symphony No. 13 in D. We can date this work to the second half of 1763 as the new Guv’nor at court Nikolaus, a lover of the rich sound of the horn, had employed four of them that season. Haydn went to work with gusto and threw in timpani as well. He even writes a flute part, which would have been taken by his friend Franz Sigl. The first movement is all festive and Antonini drives his marvellous players into it with freshness and energy. The strings have a bouncy motif while the winds play long, organ-like chords. The horns trill contentedly, and you can hear them in glorious unison at 2:58. The second movement is an adagio cantabile, a solo for cello played sensitively here by Christoph Dangel. We may hear him again later in the series, perhaps in one of the concertos, probably the earlier one he wrote for Weigl.

The menuet with its trio comes next. It is in the trio section we hear the flute solo, taken here by Marco Brolli. How wonderful this sounds after the horn dominated minuet. This wonderful early symphony ends with the most remarkable finale. Combining fugal devices and conventional sonata form, Haydn uses a four note motive that Mozart surely pinched in his much more famous Jupiter, which shares many of the characteristics of this much earlier effort. The genius of Mozart in 1788 is supreme but the germ of the idea is enshrined here I think, twenty-five years earlier.

I am hugely enjoying this ongoing series of Haydn symphonies. These early works from 1761-63 were all Eisenstadt pieces, that is before the prince had his summer residence at Eszterháza finished. Haydn’s symphonies for that hall in Eisenstadt were written for its spacious and wide acoustic. Perhaps the Don Bosco’s main hall in Basel isn’t quite so large, yet I feel its shoebox design and generous sonics are right for this music. This is another volume to cherish from Alpha, then, in their mission to complete the symphonies in time for Haydn’s tercentenary in 2032.

Philip Harrison

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