Be careful what you wish for, you may get it! Richard Hickox’s first installment of Haydn’s London Symphonies suffered seriously from poor balances that relegated the strings (and thus frequently the actual melody) to the background. Well, this problem has been solved, but in a way that only raises another. They simply don’t sound well at all. Forget about “period playing techniques” and such nonsense. The strings of Collegium Musicum 90 simply sound like normal orchestral instruments with their mutes on, all the time. Their tone is fatiguing, relentlessly grainy and gray, and unvaryingly dull.
Hickox clearly deserves part of the blame. Not only does he seem insensitive to matters such as tonal shading, but he also sounds terribly unprepared. The finales of the “Clock” and “Surprise” Symphonies seriously lack energy and rhythmic snap, and this only encourages the violins to hack at the tunes one dogged note at a time rather than phrasing whole melodies. Hickox also has developed an annoying mannerism: he prolongs pauses before tutti chords. This dubious tactic destroys the shock value of Haydn’s exquisitely timed orchestral eruptions by stopping the music’s onward impetus, and making it sound as though the orchestra needs an extra beat to get itself together. You can hear this most clearly before the famous “surprise” in No. 94’s second movement, and worst of all, whenever the second subject appears in No. 102’s first movement exposition and recapitulation. And how are a mere four cellos and two basses to make something memorably colorful out of the same symphony’s voluptuously scored slow movement?
No, unfortunately, Hickox hasn’t gotten it right yet, and I can’t help but feel that there’s a double standard at work here. Specifically, I can’t imagine this kind of ensemble sound and cavalier approach being applied to the symphonies of Mozart. Haydn’s faster moving, prismatic music creates far more difficulties of balance and articulation than Mozart’s gorgeously blended and long-breathed instrumental phrases, but that’s no excuse for not giving these works the time and attention they need to sound their best.
