Could there be a more amiable composer with whom to spend a few days than Josef Haydn? At this year’s Lammermuir Festival, period instrument superstars Concerto Copenhagen (but you can call them CoCo), have a whole “Haydn Project” which they’re exploring over three concerts. Wednesday evening’s featured probably the three most popular of the composer’s early symphonies, the ones that chart the times of day: No. 6 “Le Matin”, No. 7 “Le Midi” ,and No. 8 “Le Soir.”
Or at least that’s what the titles claim. In truth, if you hadn’t known the names then there wouldn’t be much to distinguish the events of the morning from the evening in Haydn’s trilogy, save a rather modest sunrise at the start of No. 6 and a concluding evening storm that might as well have been happening shortly after lunchtime. However, Haydn being Haydn, spirits are high throughout, and he has the space to throw in a few surprises, such as the gentle majesty of 6’s and 7’s slow introductions, and the vigorous bounce to the Menuets, as well as the ample opportunities for orchestral solos: chapeau to the chortling bassoon, the vigorously dusky cello and the frankly outrageous double bass in the third movement of No. 8.
CoCo shed a bit of light on what it must have been like to hear this music performed in Prince Esterházy’s palace, with its not-quite-private, not-quite-public duality of which you get a sense when it’s a small orchestra with only six violins, two violas and two cellos in it. There was terrific vigour to the playing throughout, with director Lars Ulrik Mortensen beavering away at the harpsichord, snatching an occasional expressive lunge at the orchestra to massage the sound in a particular direction. The medieval church of St Mary’s in Haddington is no Esterházy Palace, but its space and its acoustic gave the music plenty of space to breathe in a manner of which both Haydn and his prince would surely have approved.
A few nights previously, in the same setting, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra gave us something from the opposite end of Haydn’s symphonic career, his “Clock” Symphony, No. 101 from his final set of London Symphonies which, bluntly, felt much more like the real deal. Same composer, different world: this was Haydn at the height of his powers bowing out with a confident smile, and the SCO’s performance seemed to mirror that. There was period kick to it, with historical brass and timps, but the strings played with vibrato, the climaxes were jubilant, and overall this was muscular, vigorous Haydn that wouldn’t have sounded out of place coming from a full-scale symphony orchestra; and it was all the better for it. Stephanie Gonley directed from the leader’s chair, and she let the breadth of the musical conception unfold with total naturalness.
Some people might have missed the extra sense of transparency - they’d have got that from CoCo - but only the worst kind of period instrument purist would have complained about the sheer sense of fun that shone through the Clock’s first movement, still energetic for all the richness of the textures, or about the wry, tongue-in-cheek humour of the tick-tock second movement that always smiled, even through its stormy interruptions. There was fantastic swagger to the Menuet, which was as much of a stomp as a dance, with its surprisingly fast Trio that made it sound even more comically gauche than usual; and Haydn’s greatest symphonic finale seemed to smile with the confident satisfaction of a musical life superbly lived. This was Haydn to wallow in, and to remind you of just how far a journey the composer went on in his long career.
Alongside all this Haydn, it almost feels like an afterthought to mention the SCO’s magisterial Beethoven, with Javier Perianes (pictured above by Marco Borggreve) directing the Third Piano Concerto from the keyboard with skill, power and a fair amount of grace. As with the Haydn, the orchestral sound was rich and vigorous, the piano meeting it like a gladiator in an arena, and Perianes’ first movement cadenza had something of a bull-at-a-gate quality. However, all tension was dispelled in a slow movement of Elysian peace and inordinate beauty from both keyboard and orchestra, especially the winds. The energetic whirl of the finale was either athletic or demonic, depending on how you heard it, but found occasional major key interludes that bordered on the dreamy, and the final major key coda positively cartwheeled its way over the finish line.
