Jean-Efflam Bavouzet HAYDN Piano Sonatas, Vol. 9

 

PIANO SONATAS, VOL. 9

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet / Swedish Chamber Orchestra BEETHOVEN The Piano Concertos

THE PIANO CONCERTOS

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet play Sonatas by CLEMENTI, DUSSEK, HUMMEL, WÖLFL

CLEMENTI, DUSSEK, HUMMEL, WÖLFL

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet / Manchester Camerata / Gábor Takács-Nagy MOZART Piano Concerto in D major, KV 175 - Piano Concerto in B flat major, KV 238 - Piano Concerto in E flat major, KV 271 - Piano Concerto in C major, KV 246

PIANO CONCERTOS KV 175, KV 238, KV 271, KV 246

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet / Manchester Camerata / Gábor Takács-Nagy MOZART Piano Concerto KV 466 - Piano Concerto KV 467 - Overture to "Don Giovanni" KV 527

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s first three volumes of Mozart concertos with the Manchester Camerata and Gábor Takács-Nagy have been received with widespread acclaim, and so it is with some excitement that we release the keenly anticipated fourth instalment in the series.

Composed within just one month in early 1785, these two concertos by Mozart are among the most popular of all his piano concertos. No. 20, KV 466 was his first concerto in a minor key, and its dark and stormy nature contrasts with the light and sunny atmosphere of Concerto No. 21, KV 467.

Like so many of his piano concertos, both works were composed for the Vienna concert season and were given their premiere performances with Mozart at the keyboard.

The two concertos are interspersed on this recording with a vivid performance of the Overture to Don Giovanni, which shares traits with both concertos and further demonstrates the exemplary playing of Manchester Camerata.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet / Manchester Camerata / Gábor Takács-Nagy MOZART Piano Concerto KV 450 - Piano Concerto KV 451 - Quintet for Piano and Winds KV 452

This third volume in the series from the electrifying combination of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Manchester Camerata under Gábor Takács- Nagy explores the final two of the six piano concertos of the year 1784, on which Mozart staked his reputation as both a performer and composer. Alongside these works features the pioneering Quintet for Piano and Winds, also from 1784, the first written for this combination of instruments and a work which Mozart regarded as his finest to date. The consecutive Köchel numbers of the three piano works hint at a remarkable story: not only were they all written in the same extraordinarily productive year, but all were completed in the same month, March, when Mozart was just twenty-eight years old. The two concertos form a pair, and in letters to his father Mozart makes it clear that he wrote them for his own performance: ‘nobody but I owns these new concertos in B flatand D’, adding in another letter, two weeks later, ‘I consider them both to be concertos which make one sweat’. Heard in this context, Bavouzet’s playing is all the more astonishing.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet / Manchester Camerata / Gábor Takács-Nagy MOZART Piano Concerto KV 449 - Piano Concerto KV 459 - Divertimento KV 136 - Divertimento KV 138

The effervescent and communicative energy of Bavouzet and Takács-Nagy is encapsulated again in this second volume of their Mozart series. These exhilarating interpretations of Mozart’s piano concertos of 1784, faultlessly supported by the Manchester Camerata, follow highly praised concerts as well as a first volume which was ‘Editor’s Choice’ in Pianist.

The two concertos presented here are among the six that Mozart composed in Vienna in an extraordinarily productive year. As Bavouzet states in an exclusive personal note, they ‘share their association with operatic and symphonic styles. The contrasts of mood in their first movements and the cantilenas which serve as second movements relate them more closely with music for the operatic stage, while their finales are conceived in purely instrumental terms and make reference to the symphonic domain. On the other hand, these two works are complete opposites as far as their use of wind instruments is concerned. In KV 449 their inclusion is ad libitum, whereas they very often play the principal role in KV 459.’

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet / Manchester Camerata / Gábor Takács-Nagy MOZART Piano Concerto KV 453 - Piano Concerto KV 456 - Divertimento KV 137

After demonstrating their ‘innate love and understanding of Haydn’s music in performances of the expected vivacity and insight’ (BBC Music – CHAN 10808), Bavouzet and Takács-Nagy, the latter conducting his Manchester Camerata, now explore Mozart’s extraordinarily prolific year 1784 in this new series.

Two of the six concertos composed that year are heard here, each unusual for having been written by Mozart for another pianist and for featuring a central Andante, instead of the more common Adagio.

This is a unique version that, as Bavouzet stresses in his booklet note, ‘although played unequivocally on modern instruments, contrasts with those versions made not so very long ago, which used a large orchestra incorporating sixteen violins and eight double-basses’. He adds: ‘a versions which also will take into account a number of performing practices current in Mozart’s time, such as the use of a solo quartet to accompany certain well-defined passages in which the piano is predominant. A version which in one way or another aims to link tradition and modernity.’

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet HAYDN Piano Sonatas, Vol. 8

After leaving the boys’ choir of St Stephens Cathedral in Vienna, one of the ways the young Haydn found to support himself was as a harpsichord teacher. The three early sonatas featured on this recording were almost certainly intended for his students: short, light pieces with few technical demands. The two larger sonatas, both in the key of E flat major, were written some twenty years later and are far more extensive. Both require significantly greater prowess from the performer, and represent Haydn’s ingenuity and skill to the full.

The two additional works included here, whilst single-movement compositions, are substantial pieces. The Adagio ma non troppo would become the slow movement of Piano Trio No. 36, whilst the Variations on ‘Gott erhalte’ is based on the second movement of the ‘Emperor’ Quartet (Op. 76 No. 3), which is itself a set of variations on an anthem composed by Haydn at the request of an Austrian politician for the 29th birthday of the Emperor, and intended as a patriotic hymn comparable to ‘God Save the King’ in England – and a response against the Marseillaise.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet plays SCHUMANN

For his first-ever Schumann recital, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has put together an intriguing programme, one in which he by no means follows obvious routes or makes life easy for himself. He begins with the Op 14 Sonata, the so-called Concert sans orchestre, which begins so strikingly with its grand gauntlet-throwing-down gesture. This is a piece that Bavouzet first encountered through Horowitz’s recording of his own edition of the work and he subsequently went to play it for the great man himself. So, as he writes, this recording, which uses Horowitz’s version, is an act of homage.

It’s all too easy for the sonata to sound so extreme that it becomes bitty, but Bavouzet gives it an overall sweep that is absolutely engaging. Others might be tempted to use the accentuation within the opening movement to drive things forwards more, or to take an even more kamikaze tempo in the finale (which is dangerously marked Prestissimo possibile), but the Frenchman knows exactly what he is doing: the finale is a masterclass in precision and clarity, even at speed, its more lyrical writing brought fully alive. And in the second-movement Scherzo the accentuation never becomes wearying on the ear. The work’s heart lies in the variations on a theme by Clara, whose mournful theme Bavouzet takes most naturally, faster and more inevitable-sounding than Demidenko, colouring the following variations with imaginative flair.

The opening movement of Faschingsschwank aus Wien can sound unwieldy if a pianist doesn’t find sufficient springiness in the chordal writing, but that’s not an issue here and the interplay of athleticism and lyricism is unerringly done. Pires takes a different view, more majestic, while Richter can sound merely relentless. But I prefer the Portuguese pianist in the Romanze, her haloed sound illuminating it from within. The Scherzino is, for Bavouzet, a study in mock pomposity, contrasting with the glorious Intermezzo, setting a gorgeous melody against churning accompaniment. Here I found the new recording just a tad strenuous-sounding – both Richter (bending the melody to his will) and Pires (confiding and tender) reveal its songful qualities more. But the chattering energy of the finale comes alive in Bavouzet’s hands, contrasting deliciously with Schumann’s little yearning phrases.

For the remainder of the recital we move to late Schumann, which suits Bavouzet well. The Op 111 Fantasiestücke are vividly drawn: by turns turbulent (No 1), halting and passionate (No 2) and full of contrast (No 3). But particularly special is the Gesänge der Frühe. It’s striking that Bavouzet is generally much closer to the score’s metronome markings than Anderszewski, though I do find the latter’s performance endlessly compelling. Highlights include Bavouzet’s shaping of the first, a solemn chorale whose anguish is barely concealed beneath the surface, the gnawing energy of the fourth, and the fifth, which is consoling in Bavouzet’s hands, and altogether more spectral in Anderszewski’s. (Harriet Smith / Gramophone)

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas 3

Here is the concluding instalment – Volume 3 – of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s chronological journey through the 32 Beethoven sonatas, a cycle which may have been matched by one or two but has not been surpassed, I would judge, in the last 30 years. Yes, it’s that good. I greatly enjoyed Volume 2 (3/14) and this is an even higher achievement. But then so is the music.

All the sonatas are here from No 22 in F, Op 54, which is the first of Beethoven’s four solo sonatas of his maturity to be conceived as two-movement works, to the last one of all, No 32 in C minor, Op 111 – which famously foxed its Viennese publisher when it arrived and made him wonder whether a third, final movement had somehow been omitted from the parcel (‘no, I didn’t have time to write one’). I love that story. The differing dualities and oppositions of Nos 24 and 27 (F sharp major, Op 78, and Op 90 in E minor) are also in this collection, so if you want to sample the quality you could make yourself a recital of these four, perhaps, and disappear, with Beethoven, into the silence at the end of Op 111, after the descent from the celestial trilling, where you feel nothing more could possibly be said in the domain of the piano sonata.

Bavouzet, in his prime, has two rare gifts as a Beethoven interpreter. He makes you feel that each sonata is not only all of a piece but that its structure and not just its surface has an audible power. Second, he conveys that what is experienced is indissolubly linked to its execution, both for the composer and for the pianist; the one illuminates the other. Before reflecting on these truths you’ll almost certainly be delighted by Bavouzet’s freshness of spirit, rigorous enquiry, openness to instinct and engagement with every aspect of this inexhaustible music. He radiates generosity and balance as well as a delight in being able to play the piano so well. You are aware of him and of the current that runs through – deriving not from his modesty, because he’s no shrinking violet, but from the force of a personality who knows that without Beethoven and the task in hand he wouldn’t be there. Just as it should be. The composer speaks and you wouldn’t mistake Bavouzet for anyone else.

The frame of sonority, colour and character in which each sonata ‘sits’ is tellingly judged. They are as individual as children. The subtleties of connection between movements in the A flat Sonata, Op 110, for example, emerge from under the player’s control of finger and perceptions of continuity. They don’t need to be flagged up but they occur as a feature in many of the sonatas and can be ruined by insensitive editing. Chandos’s production values here are as good as you would expect. There were three sessions (at Potton Hall) between the end of 2014 and the middle of 2016 but you could play through the set and take pleasure in the sound and imagine it was all set down in the course of a weekend. Bavouzet’s attention to the dynamic life of Beethoven’s sonatas is a model of what it should be: integral to the effect and character of them at any moment, never a decorative add-on. As with his control of tempo and movement, you know exactly where you are: fortissimo is not the same as forte, only perhaps a bit more, and what does a triple piano marking over the last chord of the first movement of the Appassionata Op 57 signify? When did you last hear a recording in which this registered as a degree quieter than pianissimo? Bavouzet wonders whether it’s meant to ensure that this movement, encompassing extreme violence and heart-easing gentleness, should end in complete resignation. He misses nothing and is excellent, also, on the dialectic of sound and silence.

The transparency of his playing brings treasures I would never wish to be without. He uses so little pedal but he is not dry and he can sing like a…well, one of Messiaen’s most eloquent birds, let’s say, and certainly not a French woodpecker! There is vividness even in the intricacies of the fugal finale of the Hammerklavier Sonata, Op 106 (No 29), deliberately written, as Bavouzet points out in his notes, to be extremely difficult to master. You get the feeling, with him, that you are in a rarefied region, not a thorn bush, near the limits of known territory, and yet the air is exhilarating. And what trills! Good to know that such quality is humanly possible. As it is with his execution of the six-octave upward rush in the Scherzo (disc 2, track 8). This is not a Hammerklavier Sonata that has been tamed; it is exciting enough for me. If you prefer a manner that is rougher, more explosive, that chucks fistfuls of notes around the heavens and sets the aspidistras flying, look elsewhere. I like this one because it resounds.

A small reflection: Bavouzet won first prize in the Beethoven International Piano Competition in Cologne in 1986, long before we knew anything about him in this country or had any recordings. He has been biding his time with the cycle of sonatas; no bad thing. Maybe his Haydn series, ongoing I trust, put down a marker for them. (Stephen Plaistow / Gramophone)

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas 2

Not every track on these three CDs is perfection but they proclaim an artist of exceptional calibre establishing a position as an important player of Beethoven. And without doubt he is a quite wonderful pianist, it seems to me, in his prime, with a thrust and command of brilliance and musical energy that are controlled by a most likeable personality. We’ve come to admire him in many composers, and in a touching contribution to these booklet-notes he wonders if he can justify adding another Beethoven sonata cycle to the many already available. My answer is an enthusiastic yes.

Listening to him in pieces which articulate Beethoven’s journey from his first maturity to his ‘second period’, you sense, all over again, how it obviously gave the composer pleasure to demonstrate how what is expressed is indissolubly linked to its technical execution, both for him and for the pianist; the one illuminates the other. The compositions soon leave the amateur pianist behind and indeed disregard the capacities of all would-be performers, as well as the audience. I believe it was to someone complaining the piano music was so difficult that Beethoven expressed the view that ‘struggles and difficulties were not obstacles to be avoided but welcomed as a means of reaching the heights, good features in a composition therefore, the difficulties for the performer included…since what is difficult makes one sweat’. Now go home and practise.

Characteristic of Bavouzet everywhere is an ineluctable forward movement, a thrust and passion for what is to come, in the light of what we’re hearing now and what we’ve heard a moment ago. His freshness and directness are delightful, the virtuosity often breathtaking, but his control is as much musical as technical. A truly exciting interpreter, he’s able to make you feel how the total structure of a Beethoven sonata, not just the surface, has an audible power. You may notice small lapses in acuteness of perfectly judged expression – I think very few – but the dynamic life of the music is always there, together with a concern for its character and the achievement and articulation of the larger shapes.

There are pianists who persist in abusing the Waldstein Sonata as a bravura work and I’m so glad he isn’t among them. It is the only one in the canon of 32 in which all three movements begin pianissimo, and the cumulative span of the quiet sections in the outer movements, so difficult to sustain on today’s powerful instruments, creates panoramas that have been likened by Alfred Brendel to sound-spaces unfolding before the musical eye. Beethoven’s pedalling instructions in the finale continue to fox many players, with tonic and dominant harmonies in the ‘mountain’ theme flowing into and out of each other as part of a vision of encompassing high and low, near and far, clear and obscure. The transparent opalescence Bavouzet achieves in the rondo theme is to be savoured and wondered at.

So is the prestissimo coda, at the very end, released as if from a coiled spring and as exciting as I’ve ever encountered it. Bavouzet excels in such inspirations and there are other examples at the close of the G major Sonata, Op 31 No 1, and the Pastoral Sonata, Op 28 – a particularly balletic one, this, thrown off with exceptional grace. By the time you reach such moments you have come to cherish this player’s immaculate rhythm and strict timekeeping, which has nothing to do with swallowing a metronome. Playing a tempo with this degree of élan and finish derives from a discipline that Bavouzet may have learnt to adhere to in his days of studying Ravel with Pierre Sancan at the Paris Conservatoire. Ravel would have loved it while doubtless hating every note of Beethoven.

The three sonatas in the Op 31 group are all successes, the ‘elemental’ D minor (No 2) ranking as a notable addition to its already distinguished discography. Forget the Tempest nickname, attributable to the unreliable Schindler, and follow perhaps Czerny’s supposition that the motion and character of its finale may have derived from a view of horses and riders passing by Beethoven’s window. I saw somewhere recently the E flat Sonata, Op 31 No 3, described as ‘chatty’ and liked that. Bavouzet can do many things and reminds us that Beethoven isn’t always heroic and high-minded. He had a liking for the graceful and elegant, as in this sonata’s Minuet; and there is another example in the B flat Sonata, Op 22, a work which was the composer’s farewell to the 18th century.

I mentioned small lapses in the acuteness of expression. You don’t identify them by comparing Bavouzet to Brendel or to anyone else; he is his own man. But in the first of the Sonatas quasi una fantasia, Op 27 No 1, there is a finger slip at bar 9 (second time round) in the opening section which should not be there in the finished product. And someone was nodding when it came to the English version of the pianist’s contribution to the booklet: the seven crescendos followed by a sudden drop to piano occur not in the ‘single theme of the finale’ of Op 26 but in the theme of the Variations first movement. This became a hallmark, a fingerprint, of Beethoven’s style, and in this early instance of it I have heard other pianists convey the effect better, among them Schiff and Barenboim, and Rudolf Serkin from way back.

‘Tout pour la musique, rien pour le piano.’ A fine French pianist, Yves Nat, little remembered now, said that (and he was very good in Beethoven). In sum, my impressions of Bavouzet are of his selfless concentration, understanding, boundless musical energy, and in everything offered his command of timing and of the glorious variety and drama of these compositions. I retain too a sense that their space and reach have been encompassed. (Stephen Plaistow / Gramophone)

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet BEETHOVEN Piano Sonatas 1

Freedom towards rhythm, passagework impulsively incautious, insight into music streaming through a unique combination of intellectual and emotional responses, and an ability to maintain suspense over long spans: that was Artur Schnabel, one of the most singular of 20th-century pianists, whose 1930s recordings of Beethoven are still available. And inimitable; but can you go the other way?

Muted beginnings from Jean-Efflam Bavouzet suggest that you can. Make no mistake, his playing is immaculate. Yet in a number of sonatas his is, mostly, an immaculate presentation of their structural logic. The first movement of Op 2 No 1 (placement is in chronological order) isn’t a fiery exposé and the slow movement, taken too quickly for Adagio, is no more than elegant. They represent how little Bavouzet gives of himself in many a movement, though not all. He drops some inhibitions to get close to the spirit inherent in the Largo appassionato of Op 2 No 2 and the finales of Op 2 Nos 1 and 2. Inexplicably, then, he reverts to form in the Adagio of Op 2 No 3, depriving the long E minor section of its moody poetry to which András Schiff homes in shrewdly; and, unlike François-Frédéric Guy, he balks at scaling the full dimension of the awesome Largo con gran espressione from Op 7, where ‘measured silence becomes as eloquent as sound’ (Denis Matthews). As in Op 13, too, Bavouzet goes thus far and no further.

The tide turns with Op 10. Excellent pianism now gets bedded into genuine interpretation. Bavouzet jettisons fastidious reserve for a personal perspicacity that reaches deep into the music and, heard from the first bars of the C minor Sonata, No 1, the upwardly sweeping motifs tautly heralding the drama to come. Besides, he stays the course, not only here but in the other two sonatas as well, animating, broadening, retarding and accenting lines, implied passions revealed according to how he senses them. But grip doesn’t slip, as in the coda of the first sonata’s slow movement. The last 11 bars, marked pianissimo, are recreated with a mastery over pedalling, dynamics and weighting of notes, a mastery that also touches the droll humour in the fugue-style finale of No 2 and despair in the Largo e mesto of No 3. Similar acumen is retained for the Op 14 pair, only tainted by a miscalculated choice of allegretto for the Andante of No 2.

Two rejected movements from Op 10 No 1 are included. Make of them what you will, and tolerate a piano closely miked so as to negate venue ambience. But unyielding sound – more so on discs 2 and 3 – notwithstanding, Bavouzet when performing at his finest is the thing here. Do listen. (Nalen Anthoni / Gramophone)

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet HAYDN Piano Sonatas, Vol. 7

Alongside an internationally acclaimed celebration of Debussy’s centenary, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet continues his sumptuous journey through Haydn, the instalments consistently praised for their intelligent approach and clear and vivid interpretations. Recorded on a modern Yamaha CFX in the warm acoustic of Potton Hall in Suffolk, the series has now reached Volume 7, which showcases several rarely heard sonatas, some of which have been considered of dubious authenticity or outrightapocryphal. With the exception of No. 13 (Hob. XVI: 6), absolutely and unarguably authentic, these sonatas survive only in the form of copies, and to establish a chronology is difficult, even impossible. But through Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s playing, all these pieces are revealed in their purest essence and diversity, from the energetic, witty, and ironic to the graceful, tender, and intimate. (Presto Classical)

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet DEBUSSY Complete Works for Piano, Volume 5

This is the final volume in Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s much acclaimed series of the solo piano works of Debussy. The disc consists of the composer’s piano transcriptions of the three ballet scores Khamma, Jeux and La Boîte a joujoux. Jean-Efflam comments: ‘In my opinion the transcriptions can offer greater clarity and organisation of musical discourse. Young conductors have told me that they understand the score of Jeux better after hearing the version for two pianos [recently prepared by Bavouzet]… for those who do not know these three ballets in their original orchestral versions, this disc may give them the curiosity to explore the works further.’ With Jeux, Jean-Efflam condensed his own published arrangement for two pianos, which resulted in this being ‘one of the most difficult works that I have played’.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet DEBUSSY Complete Works for Piano, Volume 4

Here Jean-Efflam Bavouzet presents his fourth volume of Debussy’s piano music, which comprises the Images Series 1 and 2 and the twelve Études Books 1 and 2. Comments for previous releases in the series include, ‘Bavouzet commands all the shading, nuance and timbral sensitivity one expects in Debussy, together with virtuoso flair and characterful spontaneity’ (Gramophone) and ‘…there is a balance of clarity and lyricism that immediately distinguish the pianist’s work’ (International Piano). This is a very personal project for Bavouzet who comments, ‘Debussy compels us to listen to his music in a very private, intense and nearly religious manner’. Volume 2 of this series has just been voted Record of the Year by Diapason d’Or magazine in France.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet DEBUSSY Complete Works for Piano, Volume 3

This is the third volume in Bavouzet’s complete series of the piano works by Debussy. The music now moves to a more playful strand in Debussy’s compositional career, with generally shorter pieces of the salon genre, including the two famous collections Children’s Corner and Suite bergamasque. In addition there are several rarities, including La plus que lente and Élégie. The previous two volumes have been very well received both critically and commercially. The LA Times wrote of Volume 2, ‘In what may turn out to be the greatest completed recorded survey of the composer’s piano music yet, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet… plays with such bracing clarity that hearing the early Romantic pieces, one feels like jumping into an icy pond after an hour in the sauna’.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet DEBUSSY Complete Works for Piano, Volume 2

This is Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's second volume of Debussy's piano music and includes Images (oubliées), Estampes and L'Isle joyeuse, all representing a perhaps more reflective vein in Debussy's compositional output. Bavouzet is a supreme interpreter of Debussy's music, as The Sunday Times notes: 'Bavouzet has taken his time before committing his interpretations to disc but here he announces himself a peerless Debussyite... Bavouzet's command of touch, colour, and rhythmic vitality are all that one could ask for.'

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet DEBUSSY Complete Works for Piano, Volume 1

This recording marks the debut of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet on Chandos. Ralph Couzens was immediately impressed by Bavouzet's brilliant technique coupled with an acute sensitivity. Bavouzet was keen to record the complete piano works by Debussy and this first volume covers Books 1 and 2 of the famous Préludes together with the short, late prelude entitled 'Les soirs illuminés par l'ardeur du charbon', only rediscovered in 2001 and thought to have been written by Debussy as a gift for his Parisian coal merchant who managed to find him some coal during the particularly cold winter of 1917. Bavouzet will record the second volume in this series in July.

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet HAYDN Piano Sonatas, Vol. 6

Haydn’s reputation as a competent pianist but no wizard is surely correct; he appears never to have stepped forwards to present himself as a performer of his own solo pieces, and that probably accounts a good deal for the fact that they still live in the shadow of Mozart’s. Yet the piano was at the centre of his life, the instrument at which he improvised and tested all his ideas as part of his morning routine, and in writing music for it he was interested in the expressive possibilities that the developing fortepiano was opening up. The 60-odd sonatas represent some of the most ambitious keyboard music of their time, and virtuosity was always an element of it.

I’ve always loved it and have been admiring of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s Chandos series for promoting – in his description – ‘the boundless treasures of this sublime music’. He has done so at a level of technical perfection allied to insight, rigorous intellectual curiosity and the probing instincts of a distinguished performer that have never been brought to bear so acutely and consistently on this part of Haydn’s activity. Sometimes the music doesn’t look much on the page; some pianists regard the writing as relatively undeveloped, compared with Mozart’s or Clementi’s, and others have been perplexed by the fact that it doesn’t display a continuous stylistic development. Lay this baggage aside and listen to these five nicely programmed sonatas, none of which is often encountered in recitals. You catch Haydn’s adventurous spirit and humanity straight away; only he could have written them.

The B flat Sonata, HobXVI/2, is the earliest in this grouping and may date from 1762. It’s a lovely piece with a Largo second movement in G minor and a Trio section in B flat minor of the final Minuet that must have gladdened Brahms’s heart. Haydn at this time was reaping the harvest of his studies of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the Treatise on the True Art of Keyboard Playing as well as CPE’s compositions. Haydn admired him as ‘the father of us all’.

In our turn we credit Haydn as the father of the symphony and the string quartet, yet we should not forget what he did for the piano sonata – neither Mozart nor Beethoven would have neglected to. The other four pieces here show his burgeoning range. The E flat Sonata No 28 explores brilliance and what the piano in the 1770s could inspire a composer to write; E flat minor appears for the Trio section of the Minuet, so fast-forward again to Brahms. Honour that man for championing his great predecessor when the 19th century had all but forgotten him. The closer one looks at No 43 in A flat, which appears at the outset to be content to please rather than astonish, the more characteristic it appears, with its pianissimo chords in a low register ending the first movement, the play of texture and sonority, the pauses, the little oppositions of sound and silence, the air of conversation and the bagatelle-like middle movement.

Faithful as always to Potton Hall in Suffolk, Bavouzet made the recording there last December. I had a moment of thinking the sound a mite clinical. I don’t think so now: wonderfully clean as his playing is, there is always warmth and a host of qualities that make his fingers sing and speak and entertain the way they do. There is nothing otiose or vacuous but he has the gift of making Haydn smile at us. With all repeats, the sonatas pan out at approximately 15 minutes each, which seems to me right. He is concerned that repeats should never be straightforward rhetorical formalities and varies them with an armoury of ornaments, mini-cadenzas and little textual ‘adjustments’. Better still, he knows when to stand back and do nothing. He writes about the why and wherefore of all this in the booklet.

The thicket of numerals attendant on any presentation of Haydn sonatas, thanks to the two divergent chronological numbering systems in use, is explained by Marc Vignal in another written contribution. Necessary to have, I daresay, but not compelling reading for most punters. Don’t let it put you off from getting to the music. (Stephen Plaistow / Gramophone)