Haydn Lovers Faced With More Choices

The recently concluded hoopla over the 200th anniversary of Mozart’s death benefited not only the municipality of Salzburg, recording companies and concert presenters worldwide, it had the welcome side effect of boosting the stock of Mozart’s older Austrian contemporary Joseph Haydn--still the most generally underappreciated of the great masters.

Haydn, it might be noted, now has his own annual festival--a smaller-scale, lower-key affair than Salzburg--at Eisenstadt, near Austria’s Hungarian border, site of the sparklingly renovated Esterhazy Palace where the composer enjoyed such long and fruitful employment. Attendance was reportedly way up for this event in 1991, the other guy’s year.

Progress is visible on the broader Haydn-appreciation front as well, as witness the huge number of recordings of his music appearing in recent months. Someone must be buying them.

A particularly heartening event for the Haydn lover is Charles Mackerras’ involvement with his symphonies--a successor project, one hopes, to his lauded Mozart symphony cycle.

Mackerras leads, with characteristic wit and rhythmic verve, a coupling of familiar, nicknamed symphonies, Nos. 100 (“Military”) and 103 (“Drum Roll”), both played with period crispness by the modern instruments of New York’s excellent Orchestra of St. Luke’s (Telarc 80282).

A Haydn cycle in progress from London’s period-instrument Hanover Band, directed from the harpsichord by Roy Goodman, continues with the “Morning,” “Noon” and “Night” sequence--Symphonies Nos. 6, 7, and 8 (Hyperion 66523)--and the nickname-less Nos. 76, 77 and 78 (Hyperion 66525).

The three early works, backward glances at the Baroque concerto grosso , feature sterling solo work from the principals of Goodman’s fine little ensemble. But the discoveries here are No. 77, in B-flat--a marvel of swaggering elegance--and the intense, jagged No. 78, in C minor, both of them most satisfyingly executed.

Conductor Robert Haydon Clark and the Consort of London present a batch of nicknamed symphonies, including the “Farewell,” “Maria Theresia,” “La Passione” and all the later ones you’d expect (Collins 70012, four CDs).

Clark and his modern-instrument orchestra favor a hard-edged, hard-driving “authentic” style that would have been more appealing if less rigorously applied, with more regard for the individual character of the symphonies.

The occasional interpretive smile and loosening of the rhythmic reins would not have been amiss either.

There are also a couple of couplings of the two authenticated Haydn cello concertos, the stately Concerto in D and the sizzling Concerto in C.

Anner Bylsma--our foremost “period” cellist--is a predictably lively, accomplished soloist in both, with Canada’s antiquarian Tafelmusik band. Bylsma offers a jolly bonus in the form of the garrulously galant , sweetly silly Concerto in C of Anton Kraft, dedicatee and first performer of Haydn’s Concerto in D (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi/BMG 7757).

The two Haydn concertos are also energetically and appealingly played, if with the slower-motion phrasing of modern performance, by the Hungarian cellist Miklos Perenyi, enthusiastically seconded by the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra. Another LaserLight super-budget release (14 009).

And speaking of bargain labels, a new one with a splendidly catholic catalogue is Hong Kong-based Naxos, among whose early arrivals are eight individual CDs in a projected Haydn quartet cycle performed by Hungary’s classy Kodaly Quartet.

Particularly noteworthy here are the three quartets of Opus 74 (8.550396), including the celebrated “Rider” Quartet and the no less beguiling but rarely heard Quartet in C, whose slow movement features one of those airborne, Haydn-simple killer tunes that once heard haunts the ear forever.

Highly recommended as well from this experienced, insightful ensemble are the three quartets of Opus 55, including the superbly rich work in F minor (“The Razor”), with its striking modulations and sighing rhythmic figures (8.550397).

Finally, there is the fleet, handsomely crafted new version of “The Seasons,” the lesser-known of Haydn’s two late oratorios, that captures the folksy essence of this disingenuous delight more sympathetically than any recorded edition this listener can recall.

The conductor is Joel Revzen, leading his spiffily responsive Minnesota Chorale and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, with characterful solo contributions from soprano Arleen Auger, tenor John Aler and, particularly, baritone Hakan Hagegard (Koch 7065, two CDs).