HAYDN: Complete Keyboard Sonatas, Volume 1 (Nos. 31-33) – Geoffrey Lancaster, fortepiano – Tall Poppies TP 201, 66:22 [Distr. by Albany] ****:
This is the first CD in a brilliant new project to record Haydn’s keyboard sonatas, from the innovative Australian label Tall Poppies and pianist Geoffrey Lancaster. Lancaster, who performed the complete sonatas in concert series in Melbourne and Canberra in 2009, has been recording the works in Canberra using instruments from the collection of historic keyboard instruments housed in the Canberra School of Music, which has funded the initial releases in the series.
If you thought Haydn had his musical self halfway into the 19th century, this CD is designed to change your mind with a throughly unpredictable and bookish 18th century attitude. Lancaster plays with positivist, amiable style, embellishing as he goes, and amusing himself as the first priority, assuming that listeners will automatically join in the fun.
I’m not sure how much clarity and musical understanding these performances bring to Haydn, but clarity and musical understanding can sometimes be overrated. There is no doubt that Mr. Lancaster’s instrument, a Paul McNulty copy of a 1788 (Augsburg) Johannes Andres Stein, responds with good-natured gusto to Haydn’s epigrammatic sense of drama and somewhat obscure emotional involvement.
As a further fillip, each of the three sonatas is introduced by a prelude, two by Clementi and one composed just prior to the recording session, "containing elements of preludes by Joseph Diettenhofer and John Burrows." As Haydn and the classical music mainstream go, this is a daring move but one that should be in the mainstream of how recordings add value to musical life. The results are preposterous but thoroughly delightful and should be on every Haydn lover’s wish list.
– Laurence Vittes
