Haydn’s patrons certainly had off-beat tastes in musical instruments. In the 1760s and 1770s he composed a steady stream of works to satisfy Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy’s passion for the baryton. The following decade he was commissioned by the maverick Ferdinand IV of Naples to write concertos and then, between 1788 and 1790, a set of notturni for another equally curious and complex instrument, the lira organizzata, a kind of hurdy-gurdy with an inbuilt miniature organ. No one outside Italy could ever play the lira, which in any case gradually became obsolete; and on the rare occasions when these works are aired today, the two lire parts are taken by flute and oboe, following Haydn’s own practice in his London concerts.
In six of the notturni the lire are complemented by clarinets, horns, violas, cello and double-bass, while in two (Hoboken Nos. 27 and 28) clarinets are replaced by violins. All of them are on a miniature scale, with, usually, three brief movements (fast – slow – fast); and because of the lira’s limited tonal range every movement is in C, G or F. If this sounds unpromising, the music’s date should reassure you. By this time Haydn was incapable of turning out a dull piece: and the notturni, for all their brevity and lightness of touch, are beautifully crafted, often sophisticated in their harmony and motivic development and exquisitely scored, with kaleidoscopically varied colours that at times recall Mozart’s wind serenades. Most of the finales are racy rondos, full of quick-fire instrumental interplay; an exception is that of No. 29, one of Haydn’s ingenious amalgams of fugue and sonata form. Slow movements are often pastoral in feeling, with touches of sensuous chromaticism; one or two, though, touch a deeper vein, above all the brooding, darkly coloured Adagio of No. 27 – music which H. C. Robbins Landon, in his engaging notes, relates to Haydn’s increasing melancholy and loneliness in his final year at Esterhaza in 1790. This Adagio is taken very flowingly here. On an LP version of the notturni made in 1976 but never released on CD (L’Oiseau-Lyre, 3/77) the Music Party opted for a far broader tempo, one that conveyed much more of the music’s gravitas. Otherwise, though, I enjoyed this new disc almost unreservedly. The players’ technical finesse is matched by their pointed, shapely phrasing, their care for blend and dovetailing and their palpable delight in Haydn’s witty raillery. Here and there the horns could have brayed out more rudely; but otherwise balance is excellent, and the recorded sound vivid and immediate. A few repeats have been omitted, a fair price to pay for accommodating the eight notturni on a single CD.
A beguiling disc of music that occupies the same niche in Haydn’s output as Eine kleine Nachtmusik does in Mozart’s.'