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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Composer of the Week: Joseph Haydn (1732-1809): Episode 1: My Desert

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Episode 1

Episode 1: My Desert

My Desert

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), My Desert

Donald Macleod focuses on Haydn's work in the late 1760s.

Donald Macleod focuses on Haydn's work in the late 1760s, where he was engaged at the court of Prince Eszterhazy. Including Piano Sonatas Nos 11, 30 and 33.

Donald Macleod introduces a week focusing of Haydn's often overlooked - yet utterly beguiling - piano sonatas, which span virtually his entire composing life.

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 the 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.

We begin in the late 1760s, with Haydn engaged at the court of Prince Eszterhazy, deep in the Hungarian countryside - a place the composer gloomily dubbed "my desert". Benchmark sonatas recordings by John McCabe and Carole Cerasi are joined by a thrilling - and rather unusual - virtuoso reading by the Bulgarian-born pianist Alexis Weissenberg.

Haydn
Sonata No 11 in B flat, Hob.XVI:2 (1st mvt)
John McCabe, piano

Haydn
Sonata No 30 in D, Hob.XVI:19
Carole Cerasi, clavichord

Haydn
"Caro Volpino" - Lo Speziale (Act 1, Sc 7)
Magda Kalmar, soprano (Grilletta)
Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, Budapest
György Lehel, conductor

Haydn
"A' fatti tuoi" - Lo Speziale (Act 2, Sc 6)
Magda Kalmar, soprano (Grilletta)
Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, Budapest
György Lehel, conductor

Haydn
Sonata No 33 in C minor, Hob.XVI:20
Alexis Weissenberg, piano.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod explores Haydn's often overlooked piano sonatas

Donald Macleod explores Haydn's often overlooked piano sonatas, which span virtually his entire composing life

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Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

Episode 1: My Desert

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