Since his atrocious recording of Bach’s B minor Mass, it’s been difficult to take Marc Minkowski seriously, and unfortunately this new release only adds fuel to the fire. To the extent that Haydn’s music benefits from an orthodox period-instrument approach, these performances sound well. To the extent that the performers have anything noteworthy to say about these works, they are failures, relatively speaking. Playing the slow movements quickly and the finales (frequently) slowly will only get you so far. Symphonies Nos. 94, 99, and 100 are particularly dull. Winds and trumpets often fail to cut through the strings as they should, but when they do, watch out! The oboe solo in the trio of No. 96’s minuet, for example, seldom has sounded so timorous, despite the lame attempt at ornamentation on the repeat.
Worst of all, Minkowski’s big idea (and I use the word advisedly), consists of the following: he plays the opening of No. 94’s “surprise” movement three times. The first time, he leaves out the surprise; the second time, the orchestra screams loudly and the audience laughs (sort of); the third time, he plays the music as Haydn wrote it, having completely destroyed Haydn’s own concept. There’s something very, very wrong with this schizoid combination of a purportedly authentic approach to orchestral playing with a profound incomprehension of Haydn’s personal idiom. The live sonics, if you still care, are good, but pick up an annoying quantity of performance noise. Avoid.
