Pioneering Haydn On Record
by Christopher Howell
An occasional series dedicated to commercial and live recordings of Haydn symphonies up to and including those of the first two complete cycles by Ernst Märzendorfer and Antal Dorati
Symphony no. 49 in F minor Hob. I/49 (1768) – “La Passione”
Symphony no. 49 begins with an extensive slow movement – the last time Haydn used this “Sonata da Chiesa” formula. Unlike many of his minor-key works, which tend to slip into the major later on, this symphony stays in minor mode to the bitter end, with only the trio of the minuet a brief glimpse of sunnier times. The title – not Haydn’s own – has traditionally led to an assumption that the music has a religious basis, referring to the sufferings of Christ. More recently, Elaine Sisman[1] has shown that the music may have been adapted from incidental music Haydn wrote for a play called “The Good-Humoured Quaker”. The music would, in that case, be an ironic portrait of the very serious, if good-humoured, principal character. Clearly, only post-1990 performances could be expected to reflect this revisionist view.
The earliest recording of the symphony was set down by the Orchestra de Chambre de Paris conducted by Pierre Duvauchelle. Duvauchelle (1906-2000) created this orchestra in 1934 and also worked as a pianist. I have seen the recording dated c.1937 and c.1944 but Mike Gray’s Classical Discography[2] gives 22 December 1943. After the war, he went into teaching, but his playing career continued at least until 1965, when he appeared as harpsichordist with “Les Amis de l’Orchestre de Chambre de Paris”, including the flautist Maxence Larrieu, in Rome. In very different vein, in 1952 he accompanied Charles Bartsch in a performance of the First Cello Sonata by Jean Huré on the BBC Third Programme.
Whatever the date, Duvauchelle’s performance sounds more “modern” than several later ones. There is notable separation of the notes and sharp dynamic contrasts. With phrasing in shorter cells rather than the long line, the first movement comes across as terse, pithy and stabbingly painful. Towards the end of each part, he has the lower strings play pizzicato – whether this is his own idea or derives from some inauthentic edition that was the only one then available, I have no idea. The outer movements are protesting and dramatic. The minuet, with its striding, staccato bass, has an uncomfortable, unsettled tone. I might have preferred it a tad slower. Duvauchelle omits the first movement repeats and the second repeat of the second movement. He also omits the repeats from the minuet and trio and the finale. This was presumably borne of the necessity to fit both movements on a single 78 side and should not be taken as evidence of Duvauchelle’s real wishes.
I gave a brief outline of Harry Newstone’s career in my article on Symphony no. 34. The earliest of his two Haydn LPs, recorded with the Haydn Orchestra under the auspices of the Boston Haydn Society and issued in 1952, coupled nos. 49 and 73 (HSL 1052). It can be found at Internet Archive in a straight, “as is” transfer at a dynamic level so low that the waveforms scarcely show up in the computer. However, without any very sophisticated programme in my computer, I managed to raise the level as well as tame the shrill, treble-heavy sound and obtain a very decent quality for a recording of 74 years ago.
Newstone plays the first movement at a very broad Adagio, drawing deeply expressive playing from the orchestra and finding parallels, intentionally or not, with the opening movement of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, also in F minor. He is fiercely energetic in the terse second and fourth movements, dolefully poignant in the minuet. My only reservation regards this latter. Touching as his performance is, should there not be at least a hint of an underlying minuet dance step? As played here, it seems a second slow movement. Repeats are not given in the first movement, the second has only the first repeat, the finale has both. As with Symphony no. 34, the style of the string playing results in a fairly full sound in fortes.
1952 was a good year for “La Passione”[3]. Harry Blech’s version with the London Mozart Players was made on 21 and 25 April while Scherchen, with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, followed in June and July[4]. An exact date for the Newstone seems unavailable, so I cannot say whether he or Blech got there first.
Harry Blech (1909-1999) began his career as a violinist. He took up conducting in 1942 and dedicated himself entirely to orchestral work from 1950 after his violin playing developed physical problems. He created the London Mozart Players in 1949 – the same year that Newstone formed the Haydn Orchestra. London therefore had two orchestras specializing in chamber-scale performances of the 18th century repertoire. Whereas Newstone subsequently branched out into larger-scale orchestral work, Blech remained at the head of his orchestra for many years – perhaps too many – and rarely appeared as a guest conductor. He did, though, conduct the Naples “Alessandro Scarlatti” Orchestra of the RAI a couple of times, performances available on YouTube which I shall discuss when I come to the symphonies concerned (6-8 and 43). By the time I saw him on a few visits to the Leas Cliff Hall, Folkestone, in the late 1960s, he had perhaps passed his sell-by date. Orchestral discipline could be happy-go-lucky and he was not above some clowning gestures. He had developed a notable girth and, when I first saw him waddle on stage, I could not help imagining some bumbling lawyer out of the pages of Charles Dickens. By this time, the London press systematically ignored his concerts. Yet there was a certain character and charm to the proceedings that many a more efficient conductor and orchestra failed to match and a warm feeling attaches to the memory of those concerts I attended. Moreover, his recordings, mostly made in the 1950s, and the live performances issued in the Cameo Classics/Richard Itter box, again from the 1950s, show that, at least in the first decade or so of his activity, he had an excellent band at his disposal and got exciting results from them. He remained with the orchestra until 1984 and still conducted them from time to time until 1992. And, whatever the condescending critics expected, the orchestra survived him and is still with us, whereas the Haydn Orchestra and many other small bands formed in those years – some of which will find a place in this series of articles – have long disappeared[5].
In this symphony, Blech is vigorous and characterful while avoiding any element of harshness or anguish. He makes the listener very much aware that, while all the movements are in the minor key, the secondary material, and so much of each movement, is in the relative major. He relishes the assuaging qualities of the major key in the first movement, which opens gravely yet offers more comfort than pain. There is an almost Brahmsian warmth and expansiveness to the playing. In the other movements, the major key moments provide touches of grace and elegance. The minuet, at a tempo poised between Newstone and Duvauchelle, dances with a gentle humanity, the horns gloriously relishing their high writing in the trio. There is more of the “Good-Humoured Quaker” here than the sufferings of Christ. Blech can hardly have known about the former in 1952, but he likely knew that “La Passione” was not Haydn’s own title and took the score as his sole guide. Today’s listeners may find his manner too romantic, but it is a beautifully achieved performance in its own terms. No repeats in the first movement, first repeat in the second, both in the finale.
There is no suggestion of Brahmsian warmth in Hermann Scherchen’s first movement (Westminster XWN 18613). The tempo is not only slow, the gait is halting. Hear how he slightly delays the second beat of the fourth bar, delays the arrival of the fifth bar and then prepares the pause by tapering away both sound and tempo. The relative major sections come across as grief-struck memories of long-lost, happier times. With growling horns whenever they descend into the lower regions, he draws more parallels than you would think possible with the last movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Unlike the other recordings, one is aware, in the more inward moments, of the first violins leading the sections with their individual vibratos. This adds extra poignancy and creates a dramatic contrast when the fortissimo passages break in. The repeats are not taken. He pitches into the second movement, apparently catching the orchestra by surprise and not worrying too much about clarity at his very fast tempo. The result is almost a seething, quasi-Wagnerian effect. Again, he makes the most of the horn parts, having the players ring out their high notes at bars 133-34 – theoretically just harmony notes, doubling the violas – as if Siegfried is setting off on his Rhine journey. Just the first repeat is played. The minuet is a stern, striding affair, again with growling horns. The trio is a brief, tender episode, tinged with infinite regret. It is a pity that the first horn, who manages three out of four of his ascents beautifully, was not allowed to remake the slightly wonky first attempt. If time was that short, would it have been such a fake to splice it in from one of the three good versions? The finale, with only the first repeat, is urgent and taut. It finishes so abruptly that you wonder if the second repeat was not actually taken, then snipped off by the engineers. An unsettling re-creation of the music, dragging it into the post-romantic world of 1952.
This symphony continued to attract attention in the 1950s. On 29 January 1957[6] it was the turn of Karl Ristenpart with the Sarre Chamber Orchestra, which he had created (Les Discophiles Français 517072). Ristenpart’s recordings held an honoured place in the catalogue in the 1960s, especially his clear-headed performances of Bach. There is something of a baroque tread to the opening movement, which is neatly phrased with good dynamic contrasts, but with no attempt to find religious drama or personal grief in the music. Presumably Ristenpart felt this would be anachronistic. The second and fourth movements impress by their relentless energy, the relentlessness stemming from the accompanying quavers in the second movement, and crotchets in the fourth, played as very short staccatos. Again, a baroque concept. A harpsichord can occasionally be heard, but if Ristenpart felt it should be there, perhaps he should have brought it forward a little more. The minuet has a stern, even tread, once again more of a Bachian minuet than a classical one. The horns in the trio are kept in their place – no gorgeous soaring to their high notes. This was refreshing after the romantic Blech and the neurasthenic Scherchen, but by the end my overriding impression was of rhythmic rigidity and a certain lack of imagination. No repeats in the first movement, first repeats only in the second and fourth.
This was another of the symphonies that Max Goberman succeeded in setting down before death truncated his projected cycle with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra (Library of Recorded Masterpieces HS 11, later reissued by Sony). He takes the first movement broadly and gravely. Unfortunately, his studious avoidance of anything that might resemble romantic expressiveness on the one hand, or rococo curlicues on the other, results in a curiously inert performance. The rest is much better. His second movement is remarkably similar to Ristenpart’s, with motoric, staccato quavers and brisk drive. I detect here, though, more sense of overall line, making this preferable of the two. His minuet seems rather like Ristenpart’s speeded up, to its advantage. There is more of the minuet swing accompanying the sternness and the trio goes very nicely, the rising horns allowed to sing out. Oddly enough, the first horn, like Scherchen’s (maybe it is the same player) manages his rising notes excellently three times out of four but is somewhat uncertain in exactly the same way the first time. The finale is a complete success. There is drive without motoric exactness and the sense of fierce engagement with the music for which Goberman’s Haydn was famous, but which here seems fully present only in this last movement. No repeats in the first movement but the second and fourth have both their repeats[7]. Goberman has been praised for having harpsichord and bassoon continuo. I did indeed catch a few distant hints of them but can only say that those who prefer not to have such things need not worry.
This work continued to fare well on disc in the earlier 1960s. It was set down on 10 July 1962[8] by the Hungarian Chamber Orchestra led by their founder Vilmos Tátrai (Qualiton SLPX 1103). Tátrai first achieved fame for the string quartet bearing his name, which he created in 1946. The Hungarian Chamber Orchestra, which played without a conductor, followed in 1957[9]. They recorded a number of Haydn symphonies, mainly from his middle period, in the 1960s and early 1970s. Maybe my reactions are influenced by this historical background, but the effect is very much that of an enlarged string quartet – even to the extent of a very backward balance for the wind instruments. I get the impression that the musicians are playing for themselves rather than projecting the music to an audience. Everything is beautifully scaled and, within certain suave limits, beautifully expressed. The problem is that Haydn, even in an age when conductorial ego had not yet been invented, wrote his symphonies for a public, so a manner that might be perfect for a Haydn string quartet does not quite deliver when it comes to a symphony. That said, the first movement has a gentle pathos, the second and third movements have a vitality untouched by rough edges or anything so vulgar as “drive” and the minuet has a suave elegance, the horn rising to its high notes mellifluously rather than boldly in the trio. No repeats in the first movement, first repeat in the second, both in the finale.
Antonio Janigro’s Vanguard recording was made during August 1963 (Vanguard VSD 2147). I have always been interested in this Milanese musician (1918-1989) since I got to know the Dvořák Cello Concerto through his recording with Dean Dixon – and it still remains one of my top versions for its natural musicality and unaffected warmth. I am not sure if Janigro actually stopped playing the cello, but he went increasingly into conducting. His Vanguard recordings were highly regarded in the days of LP. Most were made with I Solisti di Zagreb, which he founded, but his Haydn series used the Zagreb Radio Symphony Orchestra, though he seems to have engaged a fairly small section of them. In its subtle way, Janigro’s performance demonstrates what was missing from Tátrai’s. His first movement is broad without harsh accents on the one hand and romantic lushness on the other. The opening suggests numbed pain, yet in his restraint he succeeds in charting a range of moods as the music passes into the relative major, from gentle warmth to tender regret as the minor key returns after the double bar. You could say that everything Scherchen finds, Janigro finds too, and possibly the more potent far remaining a subtle suggestion. His second movement is swift and terse, but his short staccatos avoid the deadening equality of Ristenpart’s, for all their motoric drive. There is, again, variety in miniature. The minuet has a sad, stoic tread, tragic in its acceptance of adversity. Even the trio seems to smile through tears. The finale has a sense of getting back on with life in spite of it all. A remarkable conception. No repeats in the first movement, the first repeat in the second and both in the fourth.
Leslie Jones (1905-1982) was originally a lawyer, though he had trained concurrently as a musician and left his legal practice in the 1950s. His Little Orchestra of London, formed in 1957, was yet another small band specializing in small-scale performances of the 18th century repertoire. It concentrated more on recording than on concert-giving. Jones recorded Haydn assiduously and had set down almost half the symphonies – mostly well received – by the early 1970s. This was the point where the market was collared by the complete cycles of Märzendorfer (for those in the know) and Dorati (for everybody else). Jones and his orchestra quietly faded from view and I have not been able to establish when he (and they) ceased to operate.
Recorded in around 1964, his Symphony no. 49 (Nonesuch H-71032) is remarkably similar to Janigro’s in general conception, and also in his choice of repeats. The timings show, though, that his tempi differ from Janigro’s more than it might sound – proof that character and phrasing mean more than actual speed. The principal difference in the first movement is that he does not hesitate to add unwritten crescendos and diminuendos when the music passes from piano to forte and vice versa. In this, he is aligned with the more romantically inclined of the earlier conductors in this survey and some will feel that this is a matter of common sense, whether Haydn troubled write crescendos and diminuendos or not. Maybe, but Janigro shows that the effect can be more poignant without. Another difference, of which I became increasingly aware as the symphony proceeded (not just in this movement) is that Janigro, as a superb string player, obtains more variety of colours from his players. This means that Jones’s second movement, an urgent, biting affair basically similar to Janigro’s, emerges slightly more monochrome. A further difference is that Jones has harpsichord and bassoon continuo and they are slightly more audible than Goberman’s, but not much for most of the time. This means that, when the harpsichordist adds a little imitative flourish in the reprise of the minuet, it sounds a little incongruous, as though he has suddenly woken up and decided to do something. The trio of this movement marks the first conceptual difference from Janigro. With tangy oboes the music is given a gentle lilt, rather like a Brucknerian Ländler. I liked this very much. The splayed out first chord is cute, rather like a pianist arpeggiating his first chord, though I suspect it was not deliberate – they come in together on the repeat. The finale also takes a different direction, raging more conventionally. Apart from the trio, this is good but with nothing much to come back for. No repeats in the first movement, the first in the second, both in the finale.
Moving on to the two cycles, Märzendorfer largely avoids unscripted crescendos and diminuendos – though he chooses to end the first part of the minuet with an unwritten diminuendo each time. His first movement opens gravely, even tragically, and he avoids any suggestion of warmth or tenderness later, maintaining a stark severity throughout. With detailed phrasing, he manages to make this gripping, when it could have become inert like Goberman’s. Here and in the other movements, he has the oboes and horns well forward. He differentiates more than most conductors between the second and fourth movements, and rightly so, given that the former is marked 4/4 and the latter 2/2. His second movement is therefore fairly steady, though strongly played. He makes much of the presence of the oboes at the beginning, doubling the lower strings – a quite different, starker colour compared with more string-oriented versions. His tempo allows the second subject to say more than usual – in several performances it just flashes past. His minuet, not so very slow, has a protesting tone and the horns rise gloriously to their top notes in the trio. The finale, very fast, mingles tragedy and protest. A distinguished performance. No repeat in the first movement, only the first in the second, both in the finale.
Under Dorati, the oboes and horns are kept in a tidy back seat. This is the one drawback to an otherwise finely urgent finale. Even in the trio of the third movement, the horns are made to relish their ascent as little as they can without actually omitting to play it altogether. Dorati’s first movement has a slow tempi further drawn out by the inclusion of the first repeat. Whether in the minor or the major key, Dorati expresses a mood of longing. To this end he makes numerous tiny hesitations and nudgings, as well as leaning heavily on the sighing suspensions. As in the first movement of no. 34, I do not think he overdoes it. The effect is certainly not romantic and the music sustains its length, but he exerts a type of conductorial control presumably not imagined in Haydn’s day when the art of conducting had not yet been invented. The second movement is neatly despatched at a very fast speed and with only the first repeat. His minuet is a world-weary affair, with unwritten slurs added, in the second bar and consequentially all through, to create a sighing effect. With separated bass notes, the minuet cadence is nevertheless present as it was not in Newstone’s similarly dejected performance. He makes such a big ritardando at the end of the second part of the minuet, first time round, that I thought he was not going to make the repeat. Maybe he could have saved this for the last time. In its odd way, this movement is rather affecting, but to obtain his desired result, Dorati has rephrased much of it. There seems little point in using an Urtext edition if you are going to add things of your own such as the old 19th century editors were rightly criticised for. The finale has both repeats.
Lastly, a few versions, mostly live, that caught my eye.
Märzendorfer live is not often found, so it is interesting to compare his performance of a few years earlier (23 December 1965) with the Orchestra Alessandro Scarlatti di Napoli della RAI. At this stage, he edited the dynamics in a way he largely avoided in the Vienna recording, with several crescendos and diminuendos added to the first movement in particular and some echo effects inserted in the faster movements. His first movement begins gravely, much as later, but public performances have a way of taking wing according to circumstances and he is soon moving forward with a degree of urgency, even passion in the non-religious sense. This movement is a minute faster than the Vienna version. As later, his second movement is taken four-in-bar but robust and urgent, though the oboes are less present in Naples. His minuet is a similarly robust, even tragic affair, but in the trio he evidently decided to avoid public embarrassment for the horns and has them play their rising phrase an octave down. The finale has bristling urgency. He gets a finely disciplined response from an orchestra that did not always oblige its conductors in this sense. Clearly, Märzendorfer obtained deeper insights into Haydn as a result of working through the entire canon, but this performance would still rank pretty high if it were his only one. As later, he omits the repeats in the first movement, plays only the first in the second and observes both in the finale.
The Naples orchestra played this symphony again on 30 November 1973, conducted by Bruno Aprea in what seems to be a studio production. Aprea (b.1941) was the son of one of Italy’s foremost 20th century pianists, Tito Aprea, and Aprea Junior gave some notable performances as a pianist in his earlier years. In the 1960s he studied conducting with Franco Ferrara and, by the time of this Haydn recording, he was concentrating wholly on conducting. In tempi and in his choice of which repeats to play he is very close to Märzendorfer’s Naples performance, with a relatively mobile first movement, a steady but incisive second, a doleful but alert minuet and a finale that is urgent without becoming a precipitate race. Perhaps he had attended Märzendorfer’s concert and had been particularly impressed by it? He does, though, allow his horns their rising ascent at the proper high pitch in the Trio. They manage it well, if not quite as gloriously as a few others. In reality, though, Aprea’s performance is subtly different. Playing under an Italian conductor, the string players draw on the glorious tradition such Italian groups as I Musici and I Virtuosi di Roma, with vibrant playing, natural expressivity and long lines that seem almost vocal in their shaping. There is an Olympian air even in the raging moments, making the symphony a product of the Age of Enlightenment rather than of the Sturm und Drang movement with which most commentators have aligned it.
My reaction may be a personal one. Having heard this symphony eleven times up till this point in eleven different interpretations, my admiration for an obviously very fine work had not dwindled, but I was a little concerned about how little of it I remembered after each performance. I am writing about twenty-four hours after listening to Aprea and I can only say that many passages from all movements of the symphony have been running obstinately in my head ever since (even for much of the night). By finding the human face behind the stern mask, Aprea has made the music memorable – for me. One proviso, unfortunately. This performance is available on YouTube, but it has been transferred about a quarter of a tone sharp, affecting both sonority and tempi. Its true stature became evident only when I had brought it down to the proper pitch. So there is no point in your seeking it out unless you have the wherewithal to deal with this problem.
The first recording of this symphony came from France, but French orchestras have not shown much interest in it since. The Greek conductor Dimitri Chorofas (1918-2004) included it in a concert with the Orchestre National de l’ORTF on 27 September 1972. Chorofas was a major opera conductor in his own country and had a considerable career in Germany and France, but was off the recording company’s radar. This recording used to be available as a purchasable download from the French broadcaster INA, but disappeared some years ago. I would probably have enjoyed the performance more if it had come earlier in my listening. It has an expressive first movement, plenty of drive in the second and fourth and a striding minuet. Parisians who had not heard the work before were not sold short, but in the last resort it is a little bland. No repeats in the first movement, first repeat in the second, both in the finale.
Blandness is not a charge anyone would lay at Leonard Bernstein’s door. His performance with the New York PO on 6 December 1977 has been preserved with an introduction by an announcer who thinks that “La Passione” is to be translated as “The Passionate Symphony”. More usefully, since we cannot see this, he tells us that Bernstein leads the performance from the harpsichord. Harpsichords have not figured largely so far in my listening though, apart from the discreetly-balanced ones I have mentioned, I got an whiff of a suspicion, here and there, that a harpsichord might be playing , maybe in the next room. Here, Bernstein can be heard clinking away happily on what sounds like a heavily-registered modern instrument. I wondered if his composer’s instinct might have induced him to add a few inventive embellishments, but instead he just doubles the orchestral parts. Given his reputation in later years, I approached his first movement with mingled hope and fear that he would out-Scherchen Scherchen. Instead, he gives the fastest performance of all, passionate in the forte passages, rather humdrum elsewhere – the concluding passage of each part sounds almost like a polka. No repeats here or in the second movement, which he takes surprisingly steadily, though as things proceeds he screws up the desperate intensity for which he was famous. The minuet is massively slow and heavy, making it, in this performance, the longest movement in the symphony. I did enjoy the Ländler-like trio. The finale sounds to have been his favourite. He takes both repeats and pitches in with relentless drive. To be fair, the recording I have heard is unpleasantly harsh with distortion in fortes. I would be happy to reconsider my verdict if a better-sounding source were to emerge.
Conclusions? For about half the way through this survey, I was left wondering if anybody was actually going to improve on the original Duvauchelle recording, as opposed to revealing different aspects. Apart from the severe lack of repeats, it certainly got the symphony off to a good start. It was after hearing the Janigro version that I decided I would not, after all, need to go back to Duvauchelle. For the reasons I give above, the Aprea performance has a special place in my affections, alongside Janigro and, as a guilty pleasure, Harry Blech. Märzendorfer, whether in Vienna or Naples, is a tad more severe but nevertheless very fine. Scherchen provides a unique and harrowing experience – this is great conducting writ large. The others, with the exception, I am afraid, of Bernstein, I have appreciated either for one movement that presents a view not found elsewhere, such as Newstone’s very legato minuet that hardly seems a minuet at all, or have set aside on account of one disappointing movement, such as Goberman’s first movement, or because, while good, they present nothing that is not done better elsewhere.
| I | II | II | IV | |
| Duvauchelle | 06:26 no repeats | 04:20 first repeat only | 02:51 no repeats | 01:27 no repeats |
| Newstone | 07:23 no repeats | 04:44 first repeat only | 06:31 | 03:18 both repeats |
| H. Blech | 07:04 no repeats | 05:17 first repeat only | 04:58 | 03:33 both repeats |
| Scherchen | 08:46 no repeats | 04:01 first repeat only | 04:53 | 02:11 first repeat only |
| Ristenpart | 05:11 no repeats | 04:45 first repeat only | 04:37 | 02:19 first repeat only |
| Goberman | 07:25 no repeats | 07:00 both repeats | 04:30 | 03:08 both repeats |
| Tátrai | 06:09 no repeats | 04:49 first repeat only | 04:57 | 03:21 both repeats |
| Janigro | 08:25 no repeats | 04:12 first repeat only | 05:39 | 03:12 both repeats |
| L. Jones | 06:34 no repeats | 05:06 first repeat only | 05:17 | 03:34 both repeats |
| Märzendorfer (Vienna) | 07:08 no repeats | 05:04 first repeat only | 04:51 | 03:22 both repeats |
| Dorati | 10:22 first repeat only | 04:29 first repeat only | 05:45 | 03:19 both repeats |
| Märzendorfer (Naples) | 06:08 no repeats | 05:17 first repeat only | 04:40 | 03:15 both repeats |
| B. Aprea | 06:12 no repeats | 05:15 first repeat only | 04:57 | 03:16 both repeats |
| Chorofas | 06:23 no repeats | 04:29 first repeat only | 04:38 | 03:03 both repeats |
| Bernstein | 05:03 no repeats | 03:40 no repeats | 05:42 | 03:05 both repeats |
© Christopher Howell 2026
[1] Elaine R. Sisman: Haydn’s Theater Symphonies: Journal of the American Musicological Society © 1990. This article is not available online, but its findings are summarized in the Wikipedia article on this symphony and various other online sources make reference to it.
[2] https://classical-discography.org/, viewed 17 January 2026
[3] Gray’s discography also lists a recording by Franz Litschauer with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra set down for the Haydn Society in June 1950. However, the record number he cites, HSLP 1026, is a coupling of Symphonies 42 and 47, so a Litschauer recording of no. 49 must be assumed non-existent. It would have been strange, indeed, if the Haydn Society had engaged Newstone to re-record the same work two years later when so many symphonies were still unrecorded.
[4] Dates from Gray.
[5] See https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/may/12/guardianobituaries2 and https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-harry-blech-1093058.html, both retrieved 17 January 2026.
[6] Date from Gray
[7] We have Anthony Hodgson’s word (The Haydn Seekers, CRC Winter 2001) that Goberman played all repeats in all the symphonies he set down. These were removed in order to fit each symphony onto a single LP side. If the original material exists, the repeats could be reinstated. If it does not, their artificial reinstatement by simply doubling the material on the LP would be highly unacceptable – no performance worthy of the name offers repeats that are carbon copies of the first time.
[8] Date from Gray.
[9] CD reissues of their Haydn performances describe the orchestra as “directed” by Tátrai, implying that he conducted. The LP issues described him clearly as “leader”.
