We have recently had Yannick Le Galliard playing a harpsichord arrangement of Handel's Water Music (LDC78 843; CD LDC278 843, 8/87), published during the 1740s. Now, this absurdity (commercially recording arrangements of a kind intended for private amateur exploration in the home) has extended to Haydn's The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross. Haydn conceived the work in 1786 for an orchestra of a flute, two each of oboes, bassoons, trumpets, with timpani, four horns and strings. That version was published in 1787 by Artaria in Vienna. In the same year Haydn arranged the work for string quartet, Op. 51 as well as revising, though not making, a piano transcription of the music at about the same time. Finally, in the mid 1790s Haydn produced an oratorio version of the work using part of Ramler's libretto Der Tod Jesu which Telemann had set about 40 years earlier.
The version for fortepiano solo is the least interesting of the four though Le Galliard, following an edition by Pleyel, makes out as strong a case for it as lies within his powers. His approach is expressive; he has a persuasive way of shaping phrases and brings a great deal of variety in temperament to the music. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the recording, however, lies in the instrument itself, a Broadwood piano of 1818. It has a warmly intimate quality and possesses undeniable strengths in the middle and lower octaves of the tessitura. It is, furthermore, very sensibly recorded. No one who knows the string quartet version of the music is going to find anything in the way of musical revelations here but I shall not be ungenerous to the point of denying the arrangement a certain transient charm. As I say, Le Galliard throws himself into the project heart and soul and just as well, for anything less would have made for prolonged tedium. A deeply cautious recommendation.'