This is Haydn on autopilot: cold, humorless, mannered, formulaic, and crude. It’s impossible to exaggerate just how disappointing Thomas Fey’s Haydn has become, particularly given its exciting beginnings. His principal concern at this point seems to be speed: the finales fly by, the minuet of No. 93 whizzes along at a stupidly fast tempo, and the slow movements offer little in the way of lyrical contrast. The Largo cantabile of No. 93, which is neither of those things, is particularly hideous. The inexpressive, vibratoless string quartet at the opening, followed by an ill-balanced tutti (this isn’t a bassoon concerto), is only matched by Fey’s inability to pull off the theoretically foolproof, flatulent joke at the end.
There are isolated moments here that work: tuttis with trumpets and drums are exciting; the finale of No. 97 has lots of energy without turning frantic; the plunge into the minor at the end of No. 96’s first movement is appropriately dramatic. But this can’t compensate for the fact that Fey spends so much time fussing with Haydn’s dynamics that there are passages where it seems that no two bars maintain the same volume and accentuation (the first movement of No. 97). This in turn plays havoc with the music’s basic shape, which depends on the contrast between large paragraphs within well-defined tonal areas. The frequent recourse to “feminine” endings for otherwise robust phrases is excruciatingly precious and annoying.
These performances, in fact, offer a stinging indictment of the modern period-performance orthodoxy, demonstrating how the need to be different has eclipsed fundamental issues of musicality. You would think, and hope, that well-trained artists would understand what the music self-evidently wants to do, and what Haydn’s detailed score markings mean. Instead, what Fey offers is a witless application of precepts dictated not by musical necessity or stylistic awareness, but by a self-serving academic and performing arts clique. Haydn never could have conceived the sort of micro-managed musical autopsy that Fey performs here. It’s such a bloody waste; so thoughtless and so unintelligent that the only possible reaction is disgust.
