It’s not often that you get three symphonies by the same composer in one concert, all dreamed up by the man who really made this particular musical form his very own. Yes, the talk is of Papa Haydn, whose first, last and 51st symphonies were at the heart of this programme given by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, directed by Matthew Truscott.
At the start of the evening the OAE launched into The Representation of Chaos from Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, in a defining statement which demonstrated the qualities of this ensemble: bold and powerful timpani strokes, string lines that seared themselves into consciousness like branding irons, woodwind sonorities that exuded piquancy, and brass that properly snarled.
Haydn clearly loved writing for horns, a fact self-evidently on display in the Symphony no. 51 in B flat major. Inevitably, the challenges for players sometimes stretch their capabilities a touch too far, as was the case here in the second movement Adagio, where the first horn has to negotiate rapid notes at the very top of its register, and the second horn at the opposite end sounds like a small tuba. Truscott and his players had an infectious sense of effervescent propulsion in the outer movements where musical ideas tumble forth in profusion, all characteristic of the Sturm und Drang period.
We owe the existence of the Sinfonia Concertante to a degree of rivalry between Haydn’s former pupil Ignaz Pleyel and his erstwhile mentor. Pleyel had been garnering rave reviews in the London press – which had already dubbed the old master “the Shakespeare of music” – for his series of concertantes involving multiple combinations of soloists. The solo writing in this work is for violin, cello, oboe and bassoon, and the players drawn from the OAE’s own ranks made good use of the courtly ornamentations and innate gracefulness of the first movement cadenza. I especially enjoyed the rich nuttiness of the bassoon, all charm and cheekiness, with only the slight reticence of the cello marring the spirited ensemble.
Haydn reflected the age in which he lived. His very first symphony begins with what became known as the Mannheim crescendo (a nod to contemporary composers writing in a similar style), in which the strings move within a few bars from pp to ff, like a high speed train maximising its full potential. There are not many composers who consistently bring such joy and exhilaration to their writing.
These qualities were there in abundance for this performance of Haydn’s very last symphony. Earlier, in the Sinfonia Concertante, I’d been struck by how the orchestral introduction looked forward to the exuberance of the Peasants’ Merrymaking in Beethoven’s Pastoral. In this final D major symphony it was something of the later Beethovenian drama and grandeur that stood out, allied to the bubbling high spirits manifest in the virtuoso string playing. Was the third movement arguably too fast? Certainly, no minuet could be danced at this speed. Yet the sheer ecstasy of being alive could hardly have been better conveyed.
It’s sometimes forgotten that at the end of the 18th century London was the music capital of Europe, long before the recording industry was even dreamt of. A key to understanding its pre-eminent position back then was the way in which Paris was being consumed with revolutionary struggles, but also the entrepreneurship of promoters like Salomon in bringing to London major figures like Haydn. Not for nothing are the last 12 symphonies which Haydn wrote grouped under the name of London. What once was might easily be repeated in the future. One can but dream…
