The debut album from Sinfonia Classica is top-drawer stuff from an orchestra whose players apparently consist of instrumentalists "hand-picked from all over Europe".
The disc opens up with the rarely heard Divertimento in A Hob.X10. Brilliantly alert, full of crisp ideas, and with expert horn and oboe interjections from Mark Paine and (what a name!) Arco van Zon, it's hard to see why this piece has been overlooked for so long. Starting with dark and plaintive calls, the music soon becomes less introspective and phrases become more typically short and mercurial. The actual "tunes" in the first Divertimento are shared out equally among the players, but elsewhere among the music Haydn is obviously happy to let the strings do the talking, with anything else simply providing gentle colour and nuance.
A sturdy exception is the opening of the "Philosopher" symphony in which the woodwinds distribute ponderous musings over a ticking rhythm from the strings and the listener's mind muses in perfect time to Haydn's. As with a philosophical text, Haydn's symphony starts with a statement that he asks us to accept as fact, and develops it to its logical conclusion, intending to be objective, but completely at the mercy of his own quirks and taste. The quality of the whole doesn't always depend on how interesting the initial idea was, and from meagre beginnings sometimes, as here, spring joyful results.
Gernot Süssmuth conducts with real panache and never over-eggs the pudding. There must be a temptation to really force the tension in the final movement of "La Passione" (surely the crowning glory of this recording), for example, but Süssmuth has a light touch, springing between many shades of expression, rather than simplifying his business to "here's some thing stormy" and "here's something delicate".
The textures can be surprisingly sparse, even for Haydn, which calls for expert engineers. There's no danger on that score - you know that the microphones are up to scratch when you can hear the orchestra breathing in unison between the notes. Everything is perfectly blended too, each section of the orchestra sounding as though it occupies a distinct part of the room, but always naturally spaced. The sound is pure and clean and can cope easily with a fully motivated orchestra as well as some of Haydn's more delicate moments. This might be comparatively simple music, but there are always fresh ideas among the jaunty rhythms and subtle textures.
Everything these players do serves the composer; there are no wild speeds or hysterical climaxes, only dedicated and energetic affection. Since this is one of Landor Records' very first releases (an "artist led" label run by Guy Harvey and Robert Ogden) it will be a pleasure to hear this ensemble being as subtle and sensitive in other music as they clearly are here.
- Stephen Crowe
