Joseph Haydn: The 12 "London" Symphonies

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Weighty & Witty — Haydn's Miraculous Dozen

Franz Josef Haydn’s final 12 (out of 104) symphonies constitute the pinnacle of the Classical symphonic style. If you regard most music before Beethoven as drab and formulaic, you haven’t been paying attention to Haydn’s last symphonies. Full of wit, color, and imagination within a framework of balance and elegance, they are delightful, lively works worthy of our love, not just our respect.

And now, in an MHS exclusive, the Society revives one of the greatest traversals of these superb symphonies: Eugen Jochum conducting the London Philharmonic in classic performances recorded in 1972-73, but only spottily available in the United States over the years.

The Crowning Glory of Haydn's Symphonic Ouevre

It’s particularly appropriate that an elderly but then still-vigorous master of Austro-Germanic music should work with London musicians on this series, because that’s precisely the circumstance of the symphonies’ composition.

You see, for some thirty years Haydn had served as music master to the minor nobility in the backwaters of the Austrian empire, spending most of that time in the service of the culturally sophisticated Esterhazy family. But in 1790, the latest in the line of Esterhazy princes, a cultural bonehead, decided to fire most of his musicians and pensioned Haydn off. By then recognized as the Grand Old Man of European music, Haydn moved to Vienna, took on as a pupil a young tyro named Beethoven, and made two extremely successful concert trips to London, providing new music for each visit.

That music included his Symphonies Nos. 93 through 104. Because they were premiered mostly in the English capital, the whole set is often called the “London” Symphonies. That’s a little confusing, because Symphony No. 104 itself has the nickname “London,” so sometimes the cycle is called the “Salomon” Symphonies, after the impresario who organized Haydn’s visits and presented his music in a series of rapturously received concerts.

Whatever you call them, the symphonies were written between 1791 and 1795, and they find Haydn at his best. The works are full of hummable tunes, and many of the individual movements have a rustic character, but all this takes place within highly sophisticated formal structures. Some of the symphonies also employ intriguing effects. No. 103 is called “Drum Roll” because of the ominous timpani work at the beginning and end of the first movement. No. 100 is called “Military” because of the battery of percussion deployed during its march movement. No. 94 takes its name, “Surprise,” from a rude jolt in the middle of the Andante. And No. 101 is called “The Clock” because of the tick-tock rhythm of its slow movement.

Jochum conducts Haydn — performances par excellence

Conductor Eugen Jochum didn’t regard these vital works as museum curiosities; his performances in this specially-priced set have much in common with his approach to Beethoven: Jochum’s readings are muscular, energetic, yet poetic and flexible all at the same time.

On the set’s first domestic appearance on LP, Fanfare’s Mortimer H. Frank declared it to be “the preferred traversal of these dozen miracles.” Given a chance to re-evaluate the cycle upon its CD reissue in 1993, Frank described it as “more animated, less eccentric, and more richly colored than the uneven cycles of Bernstein and Karajan.” Its only real, and dangerously close, competitor on modern instruments was the Colin Davis cycle; Frank loved them both, but noted that listeners might be swayed by Jochum’s “slightly faster tempos and the slightly greater clarity he produces in winds and brass.”

Jochum’s set hasn’t been bettered yet, and, despite an intervening two centuries of superb symphonists, from Beethoven to Shostakovich and beyond, it’s tempting to say that there’s nothing fundamentally better than Haydn’s “London” Symphonies.

—James Reel

Contents

Includes Symphonies: No. 93 in D Major; No. 94 in G Major Surprise; No. 95 in C Minor; No. 96 in D Major The Miracle; No. 97 in C Major; No. 98 in B-Flat Major; No. 99 in E-Flat Major; No. 100 in G Major Military; No. 101 in D Major The Clock; No. 102 in B-Flat Major; No. 103 in E-Flat Major Drum Roll; No. 104 in D Major London.

London Philharmonic Orchestra; Eugen Jochum, Conductor.