Wednesday 4th January 2012
Happy New Year! If only all year could be as fun as Christmas….It was certainly nice to have a few days off after such a busy year. We had some nice news just before Christmas began when we heard that THE BOY MIR - TEN YEARS IN AFGHANISTAN had won the Grand Prix award at a festival in Warsaw. Sadly they could not afford for me to travel to the ceremony to pick up the award especially as my father’s background is that part of the world. The award and certificate have turned up here though and they are super. Thanks Santa! Elsewhere with Mir, we keep plodding away - we haven’t had such a positive reaction from the politicians and generals of the world but who knows what 2012 will bring…we’ll keep trying to get their attention. We also had a good screening on ARTE (the Franco-German TV channel) and I had many emails from people afterwards. As for Mir, we had some news only last week…He rang from a cold mountain top and spoke on the mobile to my colleague Shoaib. It seems he’s thinking of getting married!.....More on that when we get it.
2012 has started with a passion: rushing around on the holiday to finish the grade for Haydn, then the subtitles and credits and then finally the audio mix. The Barbican concert hall is coming up on the 12th and we obviously need a finished film by then! Hopefully many of you will come to see the film and hear the wonderful Endellion String Quartet play live too. Take an exclusive look at the trailer below:
We did get our first review in from Empire magazine: ‘The ideal introduction to the prolific Austrian credited with being the father of both the string quartet and the orchestral symphony’. Our press screening in the UK is Jan 10th so I hope that goes well too… Here’s the Empire review (I hope we get more of these…):
Completing the composer trilogy started with In Search of Mozart (2006) and In Search of Beethoven (2009), Phil Grabsky considers the maestro who inspired them both in the typically assured In Search of Haydn. Placing equal emphasis on the character, the career and the music, this informative and accessible profile is the ideal introduction to the prolific Austrian usually credited with being the father of both the string quartet and the orchestral symphony. However, as Grabsky demonstrates, Haydn was also capable of producing exquisite sonatas and concertos, as well as the occasional operatic aria of consequence.
Juliet Stevenson and Henry Goodman narrate the story which begins in 1732 in a wheelwright's shop in Rohrau on the Hungarian border. Such was the young Joseph's singing talent that he was recruited for the choir of St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna at the age of eight and struggled for a while as a freelancer after his voice broke and he was dismissed in 1749 for snipping off another chorister's pigtail.
Having contracted a disastrous marriage to Maria Keller, Haydn was offered the post of assistant to Kapellmeister Gregor Werner in the household of Prince Paul Anton Esterházy. However, it was his brother Nikolaus who became Haydn's most important patron, both at the family estate at Eisenstadt and the majestic palace at Eszterháza that was designed to rival Versailles. Indeed, such was Nikolaus's preoccupation with this sprawling palace that Haydn was forced to compose `The Farewell Symphony' (No45 in F sharp) to prompt the prince into allowing his musicians to return to their homes after a prolonged absence.
These events are related with a lightness whose authority is reinforced by the contributions of historians Tim Blanning, Richard Wigmore, David Wyn Jones, Bayan Nortcott and Theresia Gabriel, as well Eisenstadt Festival director Walter Reicher, Eszterháza tour guide Zsuzsanna Voros and British Library music curator Rupert Ridgewell. Indeed, the expert analysis is impressively lucid throughout, with conductors Sir Roger Norrington and Gianandrea Noseda providing insightful overviews and pianists Emanuel Ax, Ronald Brautigam, Marc-André Hamelin, Joseph Kalichstein and Christophe Rousset discussing Haydn's innovative composing style, while violinist Rémy Baudet, cellists Gautier Capuçon and David Waterman, trumpeters Alison Balsom and Jonathan Impett and sopranos Sophie Bevan, Camilla Tilling and Wilke Te Brummelstroete assess their own specialisms with an enthusiasm that is joyously evident and unforced.
The standard of the performances is equally high, with the Endellion String Quartet, the Orchestra of the 18th Century, Les Talens Lyriques, Ian Page and the Classical Opera Company, the Hanover Band, the Van Swieten Trio and the Florestan Trio providing polished accompaniment to the soloists. The excerpts in chronological order to show the evolution of Haydn's genius and, along with the keyboard sonatas No1 in G, No9 in D, No34 in E minor and No47 in B minor, the Concerto No4 in G, the Variations in F minor and the Trio in B flat, there is a chance to hear parts of the Cello Concerto in C, the Trumpet Concerto in E flat and the string quartets No20/4 in D, 20/6 in A, 54/2 in C, 64/5 in D, 74/3 in G minor, 76/3 in C and the unfinished 101 in D minor.
The symphonies are also well represented, with highlights from No6 in D, No30 in C, No82 in C, No84 in E flat, No86 in D major, No94 in C, No100 in G, No101 in D and No104 in D being used to show how Haydn found a new freedom after Nikolaus's death in 1790 and he was allowed to accept commissions from Paris and London, where he was treated like a celebrity after his long years of isolation at the Esterházy court. The experts are quick to express reservations about his capabilities as an opera composer - although Ana James's performance of `Placidi Ruscelletti' from La Fedeltà Premiata, Thomas Hobbs's `Wenn am beiten Firmamente' from Philemon und Baucis, Wilke Te Brummelstroete's Aria di Giannina, and Sophie Bevan's renditions of `Salamelica, Semprugna Cara' from Lo Speziale and `Navicella da Vento Agitato' from Il Marchese are as thrilling as the snippets from Missa in Tempore Belli and The Creation.
Grabsky illustrates the musical passages with still lifes depicting associated landmarks and their natural environs, while the narrative is dotted with archival images and extracts from Haydn's correspondence and/or encounters with Mozart, Beethoven and physician's wife Maria Anna von Genzinger, who became his closest confidante. What emerges, therefore, is a rounded portrait of the man and his music and one hopes that the director goes in search of another composer (perhaps Bach?) in the near future.
David Parkinson
