Haydn Piano Sonatas, Vol. 1: Nos 11, 20, 31, 38, 41, 43, 44, 56, 58, 59 & 61; Variations on ‘Gott erhalte Franz, den Kaiser’ Peter Donohoe (piano) Signum Classics SIGCD726 154:04 mins (2 discs)
Peter Donohoe curiously begins his survey of Haydn’s sonatas with an arrangement of the famous slow movement from the ‘Emperor’ string quartet Op. 76 No. 3. There’s another arrangement, this time perhaps not authentic, in the A major Sonata H.26, whose Menuet al rovescio – a jeu d’esprit in which the second half of both the minuet and the trio is the same as the first, but played backwards – comes from the Symphony No. 47.
For the rest, this is mostly top-drawer Haydn, and the deftness of Donohoe’s playing produces attractive results at times, as, for instance, in the opening movement of the E flat Sonata H.28 and the B flat H.18. But it’s hard to feel he’s really on home turf in this repertoire: much of his playing is rather straightlaced, and lacking in the imaginative touches that can bring the music to life and imbue it with a sense of warmth. There’s a lot more depth to such pieces as the slow movement of the Sonata H.29 or the tragic Adagio of H.23 than Donohoe finds. Nor is he helped by having been recorded in an overly dry acoustic.
There’s a bar missing from the first movement of the fine C major Sonata H.48 – presumably a casualty of the editing process – making nonsense of the music’s harmonic progression; and Donohoe misreads one of the rippling arpeggios in the crossed-hands section of the Adagio from H.49, with really weird results. Coming from such a fine pianist, this is altogether a disappointment.
Misha Donat
