Review: The Virtual Haydn: Complete Works for Solo Keyboard by Tom Beghin, Martha de Francisco, Wieslaw Woszczyk, et al.

Abstract

The Virtual Haydn: Complete Works for Solo Keyboard . Tom Beghin, Martha de Francisco, Wieslaw Woszczyk, et al. Recorded, edited, and mixed April 2007–March 2009. Naxos NBD0001-04, 4 Blu-ray discs. This review was prepared using the CD version: The Virtual Haydn: Complete Works for Solo Keyboard . Tom Beghin, Martha de Francisco, Wieslaw Woszczyk, et al. Recorded, edited, and mixed April 2007–March 2009. Naxos 8.501203, 12 CDs with accompanying DVD and 94-page booklet. In the celebrated portrait of Joseph Haydn by Ludwig Guttenbrunn, now in the Haydn Museum at Eisenstadt, the composer sits at a square piano with his left hand on the keyboard and a quill pen poised in his right (Fig. 1).1 An inkwell rests on a piece of manuscript paper on the top of the case, awaiting the composer's inspiration. The illegibility of the musical notation stresses the pregnant silence of the image. Here Haydn is portrayed alone in his study, absorbed in the mental space of his own musical imagination. Although he was not the most virtuoso performer of his age, he used various types of keyboard instrument throughout his career for composition, teaching, and performance. The present series of recordings directly addresses his extraordinarily effective use of the keyboard as a medium of multifaceted communication—with pupils, patrons, publishers, women friends, and concertgoers. It explores the ways in which Haydn adapted his compositions to the acoustics of particular music rooms. In the picture, his surroundings are strictly private and spatially compressed, but the act of composition itself is predicated on the expectation of performance in more expansive, public settings. Figure 1 Ludwig Guttenbrunn, Joseph Haydn , ca. 1770. Eisenstadt, Landesmuseum Burgenland. Used by permission. Haydn's solo keyboard works have received less attention in his discography than the symphonies, chamber music, and choral works, although they chart a crucial period in the development of the Classical sonata during the second half of the eighteenth century. Around eighty of his keyboard sonatas are known, even if only twelve …