1 CD - 4509-90843-2 - (p) 1994

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)






Symphony No. 31 in D major, Hob. I/31 "mit dem Hornsignal"
32' 37"
- Allegro 7' 22"
1
- Adagio 9' 28"
2
- Menuetto - Trio 5' 02"
3
- Finale: Moderato molto - Presto
10' 45"
4
Symphony No. 59 in A major, Hob. I/59 "Feuer"
21' 10"
- Presto 6' 22"
5
- Andante più tosto Allegretto
6' 46"
6
- Menuetto - Trio
4' 07"
7
- Allegro assai
3' 55"
8
Symphony No. 73 in D major, Hob. I/73 "La Chasse"
23' 36"
- Adagio - Allegro
9' 17"
9
- Andante
5' 00"
10
- Menuetto - Trio 4' 09"
11
- Presto ("La Chasse") 5' 10"
12




 
CONCENTUS MUSICUS WIEN (mit Originalinstrumenten)

- Erich Höbarth, Violino
- Gerold Klaus, Viola
- Alice Harnoncourt, Violino - Ursula Kortschak, Viola
- Anita Mitterer, Violino - Dorle Sommer, Viola (No. 73)
- Andrea Bischof, Violino - Herwig Tachezi, Violoncello
- Peter Schoberwalter, Violino - Dorothea Guschlbauer, Violoncello (Nos. 31,59)
- Karl Höffinger, Violino - Max Engel, Violoncello (No. 73)
- Helmut Mitter, Violino
- Eduard Hruza, Violone
- Walter Pfeiffer, Violino (Nos. 31,59)
- Andrew Ackerman, Violone
- Maria Kubizek, Violino (Nos. 31,73) - Robert Wolf, Traversflöte (Nos. 31,73)
- Silvia Walch-Iberer, Violino (No. 31) - Hans Peter Westermann, Oboe
- Irene Troi, Violino - Marie Wolf, Oboe
- Barbara Klebel, Violino (Nos. 31,59) - Christian Beuse, Fagott
- Herlinde Schaller, Violino - Nikolaus Broda, Fagott (No. 73)
- Thomas Feodoroff, Violino - Hector McDonald, Naturhorn (No. 31)
- Christian Tachezi, Violino - Evemaria Görres, Naturhorn (No. 31)
- Peter Schoberwalter junior, Violino - Glen Borling, Naturhorn (Nos. 31,59)
- Christian Schneck, Violino (Nos. 31,59)
- Edward Deskur, Naturhorn (Nos. 31,59)
- Helmut Mitter, Violino (No. 73)
- Andrew Joy, Naturhorn (No. 73)
- Maighread McCrann, Violino (Nos. 59,73) - Rainer Jurkiewiez, Naturhorn (No. 73)
- Christine Busch, Violino (No. 73)
- Andreas Lackner, Naturtrompete (No. 73)
- Editha Fetz, Violino (No. 73
- Martin Rabl, Naturtrompete (No. 73)
- Lynn Pascher, Viola - Dieter Seiler, Pauken (No.73)
- Helmut Mitter, Viola (Nos. 31,59)



Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gesamtleitung
 
Luogo e data di registrazione
Casino Zögernitz, Vienna (Austria)
- dicembre 1992 (Symphony No. 73)
- ottobre e novembre 1993 (Symphonies No. 31 e 59)
Registrazione live / studio
studio
Producer / Engineer
Wolfgang Mohr / Helmut Mühler / Michael Brammann
Prima Edizione CD
Teldec "Das Alte Werk" - 4509-90843-2 - (1 cd) - 77' 38" - (p) 1994 - DDD
Prima Edizione LP
-

Notes
Musically speaking, the 18th century was first and foremost the age of the symphony. Scarcely any other genre created such a furore as did this particular type of orchestral composition with its three or four movements contrasting in tempo. Nor was it merely a musical phenomenon, but a sociological one, too, since, although bound up with the emergence of a middle-class concert-going audience, it cannot be attributed to the growth of that culture alone. From Sweden to Sicily, symphonies were being written throughout the whole of Europe, with a total of more than ten thousand such works known to have been composed between 1700 and the end of Viennese Classicism, even if not all these pieces bore the standardised title of “symphony” or "sinfonia". Only a fraction of this total has been critically evaluated and edited, and even fewer works have been performed in the concert hall or recorded on CD. Yet it can be said with some confidence that only a handful of composers displayed the same degree of inventive experimentation as did Joseph Haydn in his handling of the new form. Time and again we find him using novel and constantly changing resouroes, with the result that each of his 106 complete surviving symphonies is of a formally different phenotype. But what seems so lucid and self-evident to present-day audiences struck Haydn's contemporaries - performers and listeners alike - as altogether abnormal. In 1783, for example, an anonymous review of Haydn’s Symphony no. 73 in the first issue of Carl Friedrich Cramer’s Magazin der Muaik warned potential performers: “Since all his symphonies contain difficulties and untoward passages that require practised and accurate playing and which cannot be tossed off without precise observation and knowledge of the performance markings, no amateur or other performer who is unsure of himself should risk playing them but should first get to know them properly, lest he make a fool of himself."
Haydn wrote the majority of his symphonies for the Esterházy court at Eisenstadt (later at Eszterháza), where, as vice-Kapellmeister from 1761 to 1766 and as Kapellmeister from 1766 to 1790, he served Prince Paul Anton and (from 1762) Prince Nikolaus Esterházy. Symphony no. 31 (“Hornsignal") was written in 1765 and is one of a number of symphonic orchestral works in which the concertante element plays a substantial role, so much so, in fact, that it could be termed a sinfonia concertante, which is how it was described on the title page of the first edition of the parts, published by Forster in London in 1786 and by Sieber in Paris in or around 1785. The concertante instruments are four horns (two in G/D and two in D). In the slow movement, solo violin and solo cello also share the thematic lead, while the finale (a set of seven variations) is contested by violin, violone (double bass), flute and two oboes. Braying chords on the horns at the start of the opening movement are followed by the horn motif that gives the work its nickname. Such a signal is typical of the Southern Hungarian-Croatian-Romanian hunting call that was blown on animal horns and contains only the tonic, octave and twelfth, although in Haydn’s case the characteristically dotted fanfare consists only of an octave and repeated notes. The braying chords on all four horns are heard again at the end of the opening movement and in the Presto coda of the final movement, allowing Haydn to create a melodic link between the beginning and end of the symphony.
Another work with hunting associations is Symphony no. 73. which probably dates from 1780/81. Of the three works included in the present CD, this one comes closest to the later aesthetic idea of the symphony as a musical expression of THe solemn and sublime. The fourth movement, headed “La Chasse", originally served as the overture to Haydn’s opera La Fedeltà premiata Hob. XXVIII:10, a work in which the goddess of hunting, Diana, appears. The hunting call that features in this movement was even quoted in a contemporary Manuel du Chasseur, published in Paris, as an early example of the genre. In the earliest copy of the symphony the first and last movements were transposed. By 1782, when the Viennese publisher Christoph Torricella brought out the work under the title La Chasse as a “Grand Simfonie en 10 partie", the movements had already been restored to what is now their usual order, but the trumpet and timpani parts had been removed.
Nothing is known about the genesis of Symphony no. 59, although recent research has revealed that the curious name by which it is known in German-speaking countries - “Feuer-Symphonie" - has nothing to do with Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Großmannßs play Die Feuersbrunst, which was performed at Eszterháza in 1774, and that the symphony was not intended, therefore, as incidental music for the play (Nor should Großmann's piece be confused with Haydn’s singspiel of the same name.) Two copies of the symphony survive from as early as 1769, while entries in Haydn’s so-called Entwurf-Katalog suggest that it may have been written in 1767/68.
Symphony no. 59 is full of surprises - which in itself may be sufficient to iustify a nickname suggestive of pyrotechnics. In the fifth bar, for example, Haydn surprises his listeners (and performers) with a series of sustained notes marked piano that enter unexpectedly after the violent forte repetitions of the opening bars. The works is scored for two oboes, bassoon, two horns and strings which togethercreate a body of symphonic sound substantially more homogeneous than in the "Hornsignal" Symphony of only a few years earlier.
Martin Elste
Translation: Stewart Spencer

Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016)
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