Luogo e data di registrazione		Lukaskirche, Dresden (Germania) - settembre 1997
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		David Groves
	Balance Engineer		Simon Rhodes
	Editor		Caroline Haigh
	Prima Edizione LP		-
	Prima Edizione CD		EMI | 7243 5 56535 2 9 | 1 CD - 57' 33" | (p) 1998 | DDD
	Note		-

Joseph Haydn was born into a working-class family in Lower Austria in 1732. He selected a career as a musician but found it difficult to secure employment. After losing his post as a choirboy in St Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna, when his voice broke in 1750, he taught, played in street bands, and lived in sparse, cold, cramped accommodation, studying and composing (“though not too correctly," he admitted later). Eventually he found patrons, but when Count Morzin, his employer, hit hard times Haydn and the court musical establishment were dismissed. Haydn’s luck and musical talent saved him, however, for on 1 May 1761 he entered the service of Prince Esterházy as vice-Kapellmeister. He found an expert orchestra struggling to reach artistic satisfaction under an ageing Kapellmeister, Gregor Joseph Werner, who distrusted the newcomer and saw him as a threat. Haydn knew how to counter such jealousy. He set about getting the orchestral members on his side by complimenting them on their skills. For each of his principals he composed testing solos in his works. They loved it! Haydn was seen as a fresh, clever and sympathetic young man who knew how to please. Doubtless his popularity contributed towards Werner's decline and death in 1766. But he was nearly 73! Cello Concerto No. 1 in C Some of the early Concertos Haydn wrote for his new friends are lost (the rediscovery of one of them would thrill double-bass players), as was the Cello Concerto in C until as recently as 1961. Oldřich Pulkert was examining manuscripts from Radĕnín Castle, housed in the Prague National Museum, and came across the untitled manuscript score. He recognised it as one listed by Haydn himself in his Entwurf-Katalog, a draft list of his works from about 1765 on. The Concerto can be dated between 1761 and 1765. It was written almost certainly for Joseph Weigl, who had joined the Esterházy band shortly before Haydn's appointment, and who had been amongst those whom the composer had targeted as an ally. Received opinion is that Haydn was not at his best as a concerto composer. This is belied by the present work, for its quality is at least equal to that of most composed at that time, yielding perhaps only to C.P.E. Bach, who was Haydn’s spiritual mentor. The bold dotted opening of the first movement is balanced by a softer contrasting idea before being re-established by the entry of the soloist. While the tutti-solo alternation of the structure recalls Baroque procedure, the central section is clearly a development of the material, during which the cellist is required to show skill not only in the virtuosity of some of the passage-work but also in the warmth of the lyrical melodies. Set in F major, the subdominant, the Adagio is a characteristic example of Haydn's early-period "slow" music. Its gently pulsating accompaniment allows the cellist to expand upon the sinuous, delicate and profoundly moving melody announced at the outset by the orchestral strings, a melody difficult to dislodge from one’s memory. After this sublime interlude the Finale comes as a shock. Driving momentum, scintillating writing for the soloist and an intense feeling of urgent joy mark one of Haydn’s finest early creations. Cello Concerto No. 2 in D Some two decades have passed. Another time, another milieu. In 1783 Haydn was still in place as Kapellmeister to the Esterházy household, but Weigl had gone in 1769; more importantly, there had been a fundamental change in musical attitudes. Baroque was dead, and Classicism had gained a great depth of feeling due to literary influences; but it had also acquired a certain shallow quality. Music, now, was both more earnest and less earnest according to requirements, and the latter was affecting the concerto form in particular. All was for show. Haydn’s D major Cello Concerto, it is said, cannot be compared with the best. If by “best” one means Mozart, then rare indeed is the composer who could survive the comparison. But Haydn’s Concerto does admirably what it sets out to do. It was written for Anton Krafft, Weigl’s successor at Esterházy, and was influenced by his requirements as a virtuoso showman. In Robbins Landon's words, "...this is a typical eighteenth-century attempt on the part of the composer to display the talents, tone and musicianship of his soloist". And so it remains. The long first movement concentrates upon gentle lyricism, the better to display the cello’s singing qualities, while the Adagio is a meditative piece well suited to the instruments elegiac nature. “Send them home singing" seems to be the intention behind the jolly rondo finale, an engaging romp rather than a challenging exercise - except for the soloist! In short, Haydn's two surviving genuine Cello Concertos display all the varied moods of the instrument. Overture: Lo speziale in G Haydn’s Overture to the comic opera Lo speziale ('The Apothecary'), to a libretto by Carlo Goldoni, was composed to mark the opening of the newly-built private opera house on the Esterházy estate on Friday 5 August 1768. In his Entwurf-Katalog Haydn entered it as a Sinfonia, in the Italian manner (meaning ‘Overture‘), a three-moveent work. The breathless opening Presto is succeeded by a charming Andante in which the single flute carries the melody. To herald the rise of the curtain the Presto returns in drastically abbreviated form. Robert Dearling, 1998