Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 102 & 103

Chronique

A new recording of Haydn's Symphony No. 102 in B flat major and Symphony No. 103 in E flat major ("Paukenwirbel") might not stir up much interest if encountered on screen or shelf, but this one merits consideration. The performances lean in the direction of period performance practice, and if your preference is for the sheen of the Vienna Philharmonic, sample to make sure you like the textures here. But conductor Ivor Bolton, leading the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, offers a large variety of attacks and tones, and the engineers from the Oehms label, working in an entirely appropriate Salzburg auditorium, back him up with wonderfully spacious sound. The Mozarteumorchester Salzburg goes back to the time of Mozart's son Franz Xaver, and whether for that reason or some other there's a very unusual performance tradition here: in the Symphony No. 103, whose subtitle means "drum roll," the tympanist opens the work with a sort of cadenza: a rhythmically irregular, quasi-improvised solo passage. This is a bit curious (apparently some historical evidence supports the practice), but Bolton's broad, proto-Romantic reading fits perfectly with it. He gives exceptional energy to the first movement of this most Schubertian of Haydn's symphonies, with its striking rhythmic instability, and he catches the suppressed humor of the slow movement, which begins like a funeral march but then turns out to be a set of smirking variations. It's a wonderful performance, and that of the Symphony No. 102 is similarly vigorous. Another historical detail, albeit one not much observed, is that the Mozarteumorchester is with a string section of perhaps three dozen players; this is in line with contemporary reports of the London orchestra that premiered these works, and Bolton takes advantage of this large canvas with textures from feathery to full. A very strong pair of late Haydn symphonies.
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