With large areas of Joseph Haydn's magnificent oeuvre still neglected, what chance has his lesser-known younger brother got? You might ask why we should be bothered at all with a composer whom generation after generation of musicians has seen fit to ignore, but during his lifetime Michael Haydn was regarded with some respect, particularly for his church music: Mozart for instance made some striking borrowings from Michael's Requiem in C minor when he came to write the great K626—high praise.
The orchestral works included here are a pleasure to listen to, provided you don't expect the developmental subtleties of Joseph Haydn, and provided you don't try too many at once. The most impressive piece is the D minor Symphony, P20 (it is D minor despite what it says on the back of the disc). There's plenty of drive in the outer movements, coupled with a kind of musical thinking which if it isn't high on intellectual brilliance is still neither predictable nor merely quirky. Michael Haydn can surprise when he wants to, as in the short but arresting trumpet solo in the Andantino, and in the teasing major/minor alternations of the finale's coda. The other symphonies are, on the whole, more divertimento-like: undemanding, but with plenty of character, melodic charm and pleasantly unpatronizing folk-pastoral touches. Here too there are occasional surprises, such as the use of two cor anglais in the C major Symphony, P10—did he get the idea from his brother's Symphony No. 22, The Philosopher? Or was it simply that the instruments were available? The character is quite different.
None of the performances is lacking in feeling: some of the faster movements dance a little heavily, but on the whole the style is convincing, and the players rarely make the mistake of reading greater profundities into slow movements than the composer seems to have intended. Ensemble, though rhythmically fairly strong, can be a little wobbly as regards tuning, and some of the recordings have a dull, musty flavour—oddly enough it's the more recent ones that sound less pleasing. Still, these are relatively minor drawbacks, and the music—especially the C major and D minor symphonies ((CD) OCD407)—can offer more than passing rewards.'