Surprising Haydn Gets Expert Handling

Haydn is the composer of surprise. The father of the string quartet, a founder of the symphony, he is often thought of as the man who made the rules of the classical style. Actually, he lived to break them.

This year’s Haydnfest, presented Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center by the Angeles String Quartet and pianist Armen Guzelimian, showed the composer for what he was, a sophisticated wit and intellect who made music by toying with listeners’ expectations.

In string quartets from opuses 20, 33 and 50, in the F-minor Andante and Variations and the Piano Sonata, Hob. XVI: 49, there are false endings and sudden silences and phrases cut in irregular shapes laid end to end, musical landscapes without a firm footing. The first movement of Opus 33, No. 4 kept asking a harmonic question but evaded answering it, until it did so, as if tired of the whole thing, with a resounding exclamation point at the end.

Haydn liked to set things up and then pull the rug out. This was heard most vividly in the finales of the quartets, filled with rugged movement and busy interplay, but often capped with a single, softly spoken comment, a Haydn wink. In the F-minor Variations, he constructs a strict and regular set of variations only to break out of the straitjacket with an elaborate and stormy peroration.

In the quartets, the effects are made possible by the equality of the players, capable of democratic conversation. Even when the texture is ostensibly nondemocratic--melody and accompaniment--the latter prods the former rather than supports it, jumping into gaps, echoing, propelling, reacting.

Veterans in this repertory, the Angeles musicians offered well-considered and beautifully honed readings that refused to exaggerate points while steadily making them. Guzelimian achieved an abiding clarity, using a cushioned touch to shade clauses. In addition to morning and afternoon concerts, Haydnfest included a breakfast, an illuminating lecture by Herbert Glass and a picnic lunch with the musicians.