Of all the great composers, Haydn is perhaps the most misunderstood. His reputation, to some extent, is still coloured by such cringe-making appellations as "Papa Haydn" or "the Father of the Symphony". Yet he is one of music's great innovators, examining the permutations of symphonic language rather than consolidating them into a model for subsequent developments.
Frans Brüggen's concert with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, part of an ongoing retrospective, emphasised Haydn's experimentalism by placing three symphonies from his vast career alongside the Trumpet Concerto. Brüggen opened with the Sixth, nicknamed Le Matin, the first of a sequence depicting the times of the day. It nods in the direction of the Handelian concerto grosso, though it also incorporates operatic elements, since each solo instrument is allotted a defined character. A chirpy, irritating flute makes "rise and shine" noises that stir a violin into energetic action even while they elicit grumbling yawns from a double bass.
Brüggen then drastically altered the mood with Symphony No 26, the so-called Sinfonia Lamentatione. It was written as a meditation for Holy Week, and is one of the most disturbing of all symphonies. Church chorales and trudging bass lines weave through it like criss-crossing processionals, while relentless syncopations blur any sense of rhythmic safety. There is no finale; the work burns itself out with a fragmentary minuet.
Brüggen and the OAE were at their finest here. His conducting was wonderfully austere and clear - you could hear every line of the overlapping counterpoint in the slow movement - while the OAE's vibrato-less strings and wind spun out the music with uncompromising severity.
Brüggen closed with No 102, written for performance in London when Haydn was at the height of his international fame. Despite the obvious grandeur and the increase in opulent orchestral textures, the composer's experimentalism remains daunting. The meditative slow movement seems to consist of a single, massive arc of melody. Elsewhere, passages of great exaltation collide with moments of scampering banality.
The concerto, meanwhile, formed a showcase for the OAE's principal trumpet player, David Blackadder. The work, among the first written for a valved brass instrument, combines baroque exuberance with chromatic sensitivity and a strong sense of refined lyricism. Once past a tentative start, Blackadder played it with a combination of elegance and bravado, never becoming self-consciously showy, while Brüggen conducted the piece with astonishing grace and warmth.
The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column, Friday February 21 2003
In this review, we said that Haydn's trumpet concerto was "among the first works written for a valved brass instrument". In fact it was written for a keyed trumpet. The valved trumpet did not come in until the 19th century.
