Search - Franz Joseph Haydn, George Szell, Cleveland Orchestra :: Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 92, 94 & 96

Szell Is Masterful In The Haydn Symphonies

dv_forever | Michigan, USA | 11/07/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There simply is no excuse for not owning Szell's recordings of Haydn. Szell is in complete sympathy with the classicism of Haydn and Mozart, These performances are full of charm, grace, perfect sophistication and the absolute right sense of drama. The playing of the Cleveland Orchestra is exemplary as always, the sound is great too. Haydn fans, you can't be without these practically perfect records.

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Szell Is Godlike Here

Joseph Barbarie | new haven, CT | 03/31/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is the rare instance where I was sorely tempted to give a five-star rating to something (the five-star album or book being a thing which exists only in the minds of the Olympians). I suppose, however, if I tried hard enough, I could find things to object to about this disc -- perhaps a suggestion of tape-hiss is still present, even after the various re-masterings this issue has been through.



That said, there is nothing, really, to object to. Having listened to ten or so competing versions of these works (by Colin Davis, Bernstein, Scherchen, Jochum, Beecham, Goodman, and others), these are still the ones I hear in my mind as the "reference" edition. None of the others has both Szell's pinpoint precision of attack, or heft, and seriousness of conception.



The problem, I think, lies actually in the breadth and scope of Haydn's personality. While there is humor in these works, the humor is not all of one kind. It ranges from the slapstick (the buffo finales of 92 and 96, the slow movement of 94) to the witty, the academic (the opening movements of 92 and 94). Haydn, the inventor of sonata form, is by this stage of his career, involved in the wholesale re-invention and even dismantling of that very form. Movements break down in mid-stream, and start up again in "false" keys; there are "false" endings in "wrong" keys, all to the end of testing sonata and rondo forms to their breaking points. Haydn's was a restless, probing, intellect, always leaning forward, anticipating much of the symphonic developments of the first half of the nineteenth century (sometimes even leaping over those, and making his successors sound tame and conservative by comparison).



In the end, it takes the flexibility and pragmatism of someone like Szell to realize these aspects of Haydn. While he doesn't try for a "period" approach, by any means, in his own way, he offers very "pure" interpretations. That is, Haydn's genius is given a voice on modern instruments, in the modern concert hall. Szell's pared-down approach reveals that genius to be as vigorous, as fertile, as ever."