Direct Serious Readings That Still Hold Up Well
Doug - Haydn Fan | California | 06/11/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Haydn's Paris Symphonies mark the second highpoint of major symphonic works in his long career. (For the first you have to go back to the so-called Sturm und Drang works starting around Symphony 44.) The Paris set of six symphonies includes four excellent works, 82, nicknamed "The Bear"; 83, "The Hen"; 85, "La Reine - The Queen"; and 86, which, though lacking a name might be the best of all. This set marks a significant improvement in scale over the composers previous recent works. Much of this is due to the Paris commission, giving Haydn both major recognition - and financial rewards - as well as a chance to show off away from home in a country long since gone quite mad for his music. (Nearly 80% of all orchestra concerts in Paris at the time were of Haydn's music - or imposters claiming to be Haydn.) The Parisian Orchestra he was to compose for boasted no fewer than forty violins - so sources claim - and Haydn took full advantage of the weight and power available. Haydn may have avoided clarinets, but otherwise gave of his best when it came to the scoring - the famous animal sounds for the Bear, the comic clucking of the Hen; the radiant details of the variations in La Reine, Symphony 85, the Queen's favorite; and the now rarely heard conclusion of 84's slow movement, reaching a zenith of woodwind writing over a delectable backdrop of pizzicato strings.
Sets of this music are now quite common - Ansermet's, recorded by Decca back in the early sixties, marked the first time all the symphonies were offered. Dorati's complete set of all the Haydn symphonies is now broken up and you can find the Paris set offered separately - Joseph Haydn: The "Paris" Symphonies Since then we've enjoyed Bernstein's traversal - spirited, full sailed readings of great panache Haydn: The 6 "Paris" Symphonies; Marriner's sprightly Academy readingsHaydn: The Paris Symphonies Nos. 82-87; and more recently a host of original instrument versions, beginning with BruggenHaydn: The Paris Symphonies, Nos. 82 - 87 / Brüggen and now we are hearing them under Fey.Haydn: Symphonies 83-85
This Ansermet version sports superb Decca sound from near the end of Decca's Golden Age of analogue, and it's not insignicant that when you search Ansermet on Amazon the first composer's name below him isn't Debussy or some modern, but Haydn! If my taste in these works runs more to Bernstein, who seemed to have a miraculous gift in some of them, such as 82, and especially 83, Ansermet remains a highly skilled conductor who surpasses many recent conductors' efforts in these works. His faults tend to show up in a lack of humor, and too little ear for the fun oddities and striking quirks scattered indiscriminately about the scores: the clucking sounds of the hens in Symphony 83, for example, Ansermet plays too slowly, with little apparent delight or vivacity.
Where Ansermet does achieve is in organization and the music's overall unity. He sees the works as proto-Beethoven, and plays them rather more heroically than the music calls for - his way with the delicacies of the beautiful La Reine Symphony 85 is to pump everything up with little regard for the lightness and finesse of the score. (Oddly enough, Michael Jameson, one of this sets' harshest modern critics, rates this wayward performance the best - which leaves me shaking my head.) Ansermet holds movements together with a priority for overall structure - in this he often builds impressive developments into memorable events. Also, he consistently subordinates the parts into the whole - his background as a mathematician reveals itself in producing careful and concise balances of the constantly evolving weighted musical sections.
Comparing Ansermet directly to Bruggen or Fey in the rarely played Symphony 84 seems revealing: Ansermet is not nearly so fascinated by details as he is interested in erecting a straight-forward reading, without any fussiness. In comparison he also builds tighter musical lines, and the Suisse Romande sounds far the larger-scaled force. The difficult first two movements of 84 sound more clearly understood and far better realized under Ansermet - a model of classicism. And isn't that just what Haydn after all, represents? We also are spared the sounds of Fey's strings at the slow opening of Symphony 84 - Ansermet's Suisse Romande came in for its share of criticism for less than perfect playing, but next to Fey's strings, Ansermet's band sounds like Stokowski's Philadelphians. Of course, original instrument fans will say that's the problem! But I doubt if Haydn's string players in France sounded as bad as the digital sound given Fey's Hanover group.
Summing up, Ansermet offers excellent professional readings, very well recorded exemplifying the older style of Haydn playing prior to the modern small band original instrument craze. Had this been a better orchestra and had he shown more imagination I would rate these higher. In some of the famous name symphonies he simply does not equal the best versions, and so four stars instead of five. Still, a nice antidote to the more excessive contemporary practices in this glorious music. The issue from Australian is part of a very large group of CD reissues of Ansermet recordings now found on the Eloquence label. Fans of the conductor are encouraged to check out Australian music sites for information. Some of these have previously been a tad harsh, but this Haydn set seems okay. There's a stiking image of the record cover for the "Bear' - a lost art those Lp covers! - as well as a few pages of notes on the music's history, and four small pictures of other Ansermet Haydn Paris covers."
Ernest Ansermet's delightful recordings of Papa Haydn's "Par
J. William Myers | 09/24/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I just purchased Ernest Ansermet's delightfully full 2-disc set of Papa Haydn's "Paris" Symphonies, sounding as fresh as the day they were recorded, and I have the original LPs as proof. Somewhat fleeter and lightly jocular compared to Bernstein's classic recordings, they were best described by Irving Kolodin decades ago in the Saturday Review as being "more of the courtyard than the court."
J. William Myers
Nashville, TN 37212"
