HAYDN: OUT OF HIDING

Haydn the venerated. “Father” of the string quartet, the symphony and heaven knows what else. Mozart’s idol. The model, the paragon, he nonetheless remains the least appreciated--and least performed--of the incontrovertibly great masters.

Haydn does suffer in comparison to Mozart. The older composer appeals less to listeners of a Romantic turn of mind, for not only was his life a less troubled and, if you will, less inspiring one, than Mozart’s but his music is less troubled as well. Haydn is the musical personification of the Age of Reason, an artist whose thinking was direct and logical (which is not to say dispassionate or unsubtle), emotionally close to the vest.

Haydn, unlike Mozart, does not make us dream. But while Haydn may keep his deepest feelings to himself, there is in his most representative music a degree of harmonic and rhythmic tension, a feeling of real or anticipated explosiveness in those compact melodies and phrases, that keeps listeners on edge.

Of the 40-odd authenticated Haydn keyboard sonatas, at least a dozen are masterpieces, which have come, like his quartets, to serve as warm-up pieces in live performance, throwaway preludes to the “weightier” (Beethoven, Romantic or 20th-Century) elements of the program. The Haydn sonata at its finest compresses as much energy, harmonic surprise and melodic distinctiveness into its span as does many a longer Beethoven sonata.

Three of the better sonatas are played by pianist Alfred Brendel (Philips 412 228, LP or CD)--Nos. 32, 34 and 42 in the Hoboken catalogue. The dark and brittle work in E minor (No. 34) being one of the most impressive cases in point, notably so in Brendel’s fluent, driving and intelligently ornamented rendition.

Haydn’s Mass in C, subtitled by the composer “In tempore belli” (In Time of War) to note Napoleon’s thrusts into the Austrian heartland in 1796, has since become popularly known--for obvious reasons of scoring--as the “Paukenmesse” (Drum Roll Mass). This almost bewilderingly rich work, darkly dramatic and blazingly jubilant by turns (often within a few measures), comes to us in two excellent new recorded editions: a fleet-footed, texturally transparent one in which Neville Marriner leads the Leipzig Radio Choir and Dresden State Orchestra (Angel 47425, CD) and a more solemn, lushly textured version by the Chorus and Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio led by Leonard Bernstein (Philips 412 734, LP or CD).

Both choruses are excellent, Marriner’s the more flexible, Bernstein’s plummier in tone, but both solo quartets tend to be serviceable rather than brilliant, with only Hans Sotin, Bernstein’s bass soloist, providing better than routine singing.

In the popular Symphony No. 103 in E-flat (“Drum Roll”) and the nicknameless, therefore less familiar No. 102 in B-flat--to some tastes the greatest of all the late Haydn symphonies--Georg Solti and the London Philharmonic are all bristling energy and brilliance. The orchestra is large, as was the ensemble at their London premieres in 1795. But Solti maintains a buoyancy that may be attributable to the healthy influence of period performance. Tempos are very fast in all the corner movements, and the ejaculatory dynamics--the “Solti blast”--of the conductor’s younger days are occasionally present and, interestingly, they really don’t contradict the spirit of the music (London 414 673, CD; LP previously released).

Derek Solomons and his L’Estro Armonico, a small, London-based period-instrument ensemble, have now recorded over forty Haydn symphonies. Among them are the two dozen written during the decade 1766 and 1776 that more or less constitutes the composer’s “Sturm und Drang” period. In that period, Haydn created an unprecedentedly dramatic body of instrumental music, transforming the symphony, which had become a form of polite social entertainment, into a vital, compelling medium--intense, aggressive, harmonically bold music that demanded the listener’s attention.

Solomons, who leads from the concertmaster’s chair, has no truck with sweetness or even elegance of phrasing, as he shows again in the two latest installments of the ongoing series, each package comprising a half-dozen “Sturm und Drang” symphonies (in three-LP sets--no CDs planned). Volume 10 contains Nos. 50, 54-57, and 64 (CBS M3 42111), Volume 11 Nos. 60, 63 and 66-69 (CBS M3 42157).

There are spectacular treasures among these almost uniformly little-known works: Nos. 54 and 56, with the other-worldly harmonies of their slow movements; the manic tempo and dynamic shifts and intentionally wrong notes of the programmatic No. 63 (“Il Distratto”), intended to depict mental instability; the tremendous rhythmic drive of No. 67. Then, too, there are couple of dogs: the backward-looking, underpowered Nos. 66 and 68. But as the composer’s lapses are few, so Solomons and his players maintain a level of energy and intensity consistent with Haydn’s.