Such was Haydn’s international prestige by the 1780s that in an age before copyright laws publishers were only too happy to market other men’s works under his name. A case in point was the three-movement D major Symphony by the Swedish-based Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-92), published in Paris and London. After Kraus had visited the Esterházy court in 1783, Haydn allegedly praised him as “one of the greatest geniuses I have ever met”. This symphony is not, perhaps, one of Kraus’s very finest but it is certainly an attractive, inventive work, with far more textural and harmonic surprises than the average symphony of the day. No one now would be likely to mistake the outer movements for Haydn, though in the popular-style slow movement Kraus seems to remember the Andante of Haydn’s L’Impériale Symphony (No 53), a smash hit in Paris and London. Guy van Waas reinforces the Haydn parallel by taking Kraus’s slow movement quite perkily, where the marking Andante un poco largo implies a slightly more reflective tempo. That proviso apart, he directs his responsive period band in a spirited, crisply articulated performance, bringing a fiery sweep to the first movement’s development and a cussed energy to the quick-march finale.

The flanking Haydn symphonies, one written for Paris, the other, the Farewell, introduced there in 1784 (where it was nicely billed as “La Symphonie où l’on s’en va”), are enjoyable, too, with lithe rhythms, transparent textures (Haydn’s delicious bassoon-writing always clearly audible in La Reine) and shrewdly judged speeds: the trickyto- gauge Romanze of La Reine is spot on, both in tempo and spirit. The antiphonal division of the violins pays particular dividends in the fierce contrapuntal sallies of the Farewell’s finale. Van Waas’s La Reine is rather more urbane and gracious than the gleefully subversive Harnoncourt in his Gramophone Award-winning complete “Paris” set (DHM, 8/05), which some may feel is no bad thing. In the first Adagio of the Farewell van Waas seems to be thinking bar by bar. Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert (Archiv, 2/90R) are altogether more sensitive to the music’s ethereal delicacy and remote, speculative modulations. But in the fast movements van Waas fully matches Pinnock’s fierce energy and pointing of Haydn’s excruciating dissonances, often courtesy of the horns. He is always careful, too, to ratchet up the intensity on repeats. With first-rate recorded sound, this is a disc unlikely to disappoint anyone who fancies this particular offbeat selection of symphonies.