KEY POINTS:
In a world where you can get all 32 Beethoven sonatas recorded by any number of pianists, Haydn's 60-odd sonatas for the instrument have been shamefully overlooked.
Yet, movement by movement, the older composer has made a unique contribution to the literature of the keyboard, evoking the elegant, shifting fashions of the 18th century before he signs off, in E flat major, with a startling acknowledgement of young Beethoven waiting in the wings.
Let's not argue with Canadian pianist Glenn Gould when he commented, "one never gets the feeling that any two are cut from the same cookie stamp". Gould's countryman, Marc-Andre Hamelin, a pianist treasured for his devotion to the more neglected glades of the piano repertoire, has selected just 10 of Haydn's Sonatas for a new double album on Hyperion Records.
The Hamelin charisma is stamped on this music from the first Sonata of the set, one of Haydn's greatest, No 50 in C major. In the opening movement, staccatos are as crisp as the best melba toast and, where lesser pianists rattle, Hamelin creates sculptural sheen. The Adagio is the purest of songs, the final scherzo a puckish scamper.
A G major work is delivered innocentemente without descending to coyness. The first A flat major Sonata has an Adagio in which Hamelin's fingers seem to cluster harmonies into a translucent glow; the same fingers defy belief when they risk a speeding citation during a breathless B flat Finale.
While you might expect expansiveness in the Beethovenian E flat major Sonata, it is startling to find the same gravitas given to a much earlier F major work, its minor key Adagio born again as romantic elegy.
Best of all, not only is the recording first-rate but so is the cost, with a two-for-one pricing on the double set.
* Haydn Piano Sonatas (Hyperion CDA 67554, through Ode Records.
