Haydn Symphonies 102 and 103 – Ivor Bolton

Ivor Bolton has spent the better part of two decades coaxing the Mozarteum Orchestra into a sound that splits the difference between the plush Vienna manner and the leaner, quicker-footed style the period-instrument crowd made fashionable a generation ago. You hear it right away in the Symphony No. 102 — those horns don’t wallow, but they don’t apologize for their weight either. The vibrato is judicious rather than banished outright, which is exactly right for Haydn in his London prime, writing for an audience that wanted both wit and grandeur and expected to get both at once.

The slow movement of No. 102 — Haydn recycled it, famously, from the piano trio in F-sharp minor, and it’s one of his heartbreakers — unfolds here with unhurried tenderness. Bolton doesn’t rush the phrase endings the way some modern-instrument conductors do out of some misplaced fear of sentimentality. He lets the cellos sing. Good; this music earns its ache.

Where the disc really argues for itself is in the finale of 102, taken at a tempo that has genuine teeth without ever curdling into scramble. Attacks are clean. The bassoon pokes through the texture at just the moments Haydn wants it to, a little private joke shared with the players in the pit at the King’s Theatre in 1795, still landing more than two centuries later.

The “Drumroll,” No. 103, with that famous unaccompanied timpani roll opening (Paukenwirbel, the Austrians call it, not without affection), gets a reading that’s alert to the work’s strangeness. This is a symphony that begins in fog and mystery, a slow introduction that seems to be searching for its own key, and Bolton doesn’t smooth over the disorientation. The double variations of the Andante are shaped with real character: the minor-mode Croatian folk tune (Haydn probably picked it up from his years in Eisenstadt and Esterháza, though nobody can prove it) has an appropriately rustic snap, contrasted nicely against the major-mode episodes.

Timpanist aside — and he’s distinguished, biting into that opening roll with real presence rather than the polite pitter-patter some engineers prefer — the Mozarteum brass covers itself in glory throughout. There’s a burnished quality to the horn and trumpet writing in the finale that recalls, oddly enough, late Beecham: not the tempos, which are brisker here, but that same sense of an orchestra enjoying itself without descending into showing off.

I keep returning, as I always do with these two symphonies, to Beecham’s old RPO recordings. Outdated editions and all, they retain an unmatched sense of occasion, a feeling that something important and delightful is happening in real time. Colin Davis with the Concertgebouw remains the safer modern-instrument choice, more aristocratic, less puckish. Thomas Fey’s period-adjacent Heidelberg series has its partisans, and rightly so; his No. 102, recorded around the same time as this one, has a wilder, more athletic edge, though not everyone will want quite that much adrenaline in their Haydn.

Bolton splits a difference nobody quite asked him to split, and mostly it works. The playing is polished without turning slick, characterful without turning eccentric.

My only real complaint is the measure — under fifty-four minutes for two symphonies, when their own Oehms disc of Nos. 60, 88 and 96 ran nearly 68 minutes and cost the same. Generosity matters at full price, and Haydn wrote 106 of these things; there was room for a third work, even a slight one, even an overture. As it stands, this is a lovely, intelligently argued release that leaves you wanting. Not dissatisfied, exactly. But wanting, which amounts to nearly the same complaint in different clothes.

Recommended, with that reservation firmly on the table. If Oehms is building toward a complete cycle, and the signs point that way, they’d do well to think about disc economics before the project gets much further along. The music-making deserves better company on each CD than mere brevity currently provides.