Comparison Recordings:
Variations in G; in
D: Derek Adlam, clavichord Guild GMCD
7260
Variations in G: in f: Joanna Leach,
square piano CBS M2k 36947
Fantasia in C: András Schiff
Warner Elatus 2564 60807-2
Persons who know Haydn
only through his later symphonies and
perhaps the oratorios may have formed
a picture of him as stuffy and remote,
and may be startled to hear that Haydn
wrote simple keyboard pieces and variations
on randy folksongs. In fact considering
how his keyboard music — including his
chamber music for piano, and excepting,
of course, the one keyboard concerto
in d — has been neglected for the
last two centuries, until recently most
music lovers would be surprised to know
he wrote anything at all for keyboard.
Some years ago his piano sonatas were
"discovered" and even Glenn
Gould recorded a set of them. Many pianists
of note now have one disk at least of
some late piano sonatas in their discography.
And now we are very much in Ronald Brautigam’s
debt for bringing us the entire canon
of keyboard works, great and small.
Being a genial man who enjoyed pleasing
people, Haydn was incapable of being
stuffy or remote, so all of these works
convey Haydn’s sense of humour and skill
at entertaining.
A set of works played
by the same artist and recorded in a
short space of time as this one is may
have some disadvantages, but one great
advantage is that the works can easily
be compared to one another. Their similarity,
or difference from each other, is made
very clear. The disadvantage is that
the uniqueness of each work is explored
less than it would be if the artist
played it by itself and made more of
an individual study over time. A D.Mus.
friend had one favourite Haydn piano
sonata which he loved so much he played
it for us very time we met (Hob XVI:50).
Naturally with such concentrated and
prolonged study, the work yielded many
of its secrets to his eager fingers.
Unfortunately that work is not included
in this volume, for I would love to
hear Brautigam’s performance of it which
would, I am sure, sound to me fresh
and new.
Brautigam’s instrument
is brilliant and sounds like a small
modern piano rather than having the
bell-like, harp-like, sweetness and
warmth of some fortepianos. Brautigam’s
technique is facile and brilliant making
the most of the clarity of his instrument,
which unfortunately has occasionally
just a tiny bit of a ring in the middle
register. Brautigam’s Hob XVII:1 Sauschneider
Variations is marginally more
flexible than either Leach or Adlam,
although Adlam gets going a nice landler
stomp-and-swagger. Brautigam’s Hob XVII:7
is also clearly the best version; he
achieves a nice danceable lilt and almost
a flamboyance with the soprano flourishes
in the variations, even though Adlam
is close behind. However, the exceptional
Schiff performance of the Hob XVII:4
Fantasia in C however carries
all before him.
Julius Wender in his
notes to this Fantasia in C,
asserts that the theme is original with
Haydn, and not a folksong, whereas in
the notes to the Schiff recording Mischa
Donat gives us the title of a folksong
("The peasant woman has lost her
cat..."). A reasonable resolution
of this diversity would be to assume
that the folksong may be unfamiliar
to many scholars, or the tune may diverge
sufficiently from the theme of the Fantasia
that there may be some reasonable dispute
as to whether they are in fact the same
tune. For example, is the randy English
ballad "My thing is my own ..."
actually the theme of the variations
movement of Mozart’s A major piano sonata?
I say yes, but nobody agrees with me.
But of course, no other
artist plays all of the works that Brautigam
does so a Haydn keyboard fanatic, such
as myself, must have this set to hear
all the music, and by also including
more familiar works, the relationship
between the familiar and unfamiliar
works is made clear. And as we have
seen, Brautigam is a superbly skilled
and imaginative artist and evidences
a great interest in these pieces, large
and small.
Is Haydn really an
interesting enough composer to want
to listen through to three CDs of miscellaneous
dances and variations? And this only
one such set out of a total of eleven?
Probably not for most average music
lovers. Haydn would be the first to
agree that some of these pieces are
not his best music, and in fact some
of these pieces are specifically teaching
pieces, others, "first versions"
or sketches which may have survived
more or less accidentally. But of those
many works on these disks which are
first rate Haydn, we have here first
rate performances that make me want
to hear other volumes in this set.
Paul Shoemaker