This about That
Wayne A. | Belfast, Northern Ireland | 11/09/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"About 35 years of listening to "Classical Music" and Harnoncourt's handling of the andante of the "Clock" symphony completely changed my listening habits and the way I hear music. Think of a pleasant but unremarkable painting that's cleaned up a bit or seen under different lighting and it suddenly becomes a stunning masterpiece. I worried that I'd just missed something that was there in other performances but when I went back through my various recordings of this work, well, what Harnoncourt found just wasn't there. Worse, most conductors, even the best, just danced competently through this movement and missed the gold.
Harnoncourt's been arguing that Haydn was a far more advanced composer than we've taken him to be, more advanced even than his illustrious peers, and insightful interpretations of this sort add a lot of weight to that assessment. I'm now noticing this elsewhere in Haydn's music, thanks to these recordings.
Haydn's situation is reminding me of Berlioz's, and in the last century maybe Ives's--initially interesting and entertaining but essentially limited and shallow pools, that on closer inspection turn up being nearly bottomless."