Conflagration

Donald Macleod tells the story of how - as he plotted his exit from the Eszterhaza Place - Haydn's musical activities were interrupted by a huge fire at the estate's opera house.

Joseph Haydn's rightly lionised by music history as the "Father of the Symphony" - a man who took a nascent form and turned it into the very apex of musical composition. Repeating the trick with another benchmark musical genre seems almost greedy of him - and yet, with more than eighty masterful examples, Haydn's dubbed the "Father of the String Quartet" too. Which makes the neglect of one area of his musical output rather puzzling. Haydn wrote more than sixty keyboard sonatas, spanning a remarkable half-century in music history. This period saw harpsichords and clavichords replaced by the forerunners of the modern piano, and - more than that - keyboard music go from light dance suites to the sonata: a form that would shortly be taken by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert into the very highest pinnacle of musical art. None of this could have happened without Haydn. And yet, his array of sonatas lag behind the fame and appreciation of his symphonies and quartets. This week, Donald Macleod puts that right: with no fewer than fourteen examples, in the hands of fourteen virtuoso pianists from the last century, with a supporting cast of musical excerpts from opera, chamber and vocal works.

As Haydn's operatic activities are briefly quelled by the Eszterhazy fire, he also realises he's been overtaken as a stage composer by the brilliant precocity of his contemporary Mozart. Donald Macleod introduces another trio of the keyboard sonatas Haydn wrote during this period - in the virtuoso hands of Ronald Brautigam, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, and one of the giants of 20th century recorded music: Glenn Gould.

Haydn
Mi dica, il mio signore (La fedelta premiata, Act 1)
Thomas Quasthoff, baritone
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
Gottfried von der Goltz, conductor

Haydn
Sonata No 49 in C sharp minor, Hob.XVI:36
Ronald Brautigam, fortepiano

Haydn
Di questo audace ferro; Sappi che la belleza (La fedelta premiata)
Thomas Quasthoff, baritone
Freiburg Baroque Orchestra
Gottfried von der Goltz, conductor

Haydn
Sonata No 55 in B flat major, Hob.XVI:41
Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, piano

Haydn
Sonata No 56 in D major, Hob.XVI:42
Glenn Gould, piano.