Latest From LACO--and From Haydn

The first recording by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in some years of a program of symphonies by Joseph Haydn--and the first under its new music director Christof Perick (Dorian 90168)--is not to be welcomed simply as an expression of local boosterism or as just another solid addition to the already sizable Haydn discography.

It is an enjoyable recording and a significant one that goes a long way toward bridging the widening gap between historically informed performance--with its implications of old, often recalcitrant instruments--and 18th-Century music on 20th-Century instruments, under conductors trained principally in 19th-Century repertory.

Perick and his charges have here produced exemplars of healthy stylistic cross-fertilization: the joining of salient elements of period style, its brisk tempos, sprung rhythms and restrained, variable string vibrato, to the larger resonance of modern instruments.

Absent is the plaintive--to some ears, droopy--sound that results from light pressure on gut strings, particularly when the executants are not top-flight technicians. Banished as well is the inflated, for this repertory, sound of Romantic strings.

The three symphonies offered are: No. 104, last of the 12 “London” symphonies; the somewhat less familiar No. 82 (“The Bear”), first of the six “Paris” symphonies, and a cheeky rarity, No. 38, in C, its concerto-like oboe solo executed with superlative skill and ornamental imaginativeness by Allan Vogel.

Perick launches all three works with enormous gusto without allowing them to become hectic. There is a constant sense of motion and, given the unerringly sensitive cooperation of his players, the most natural projection of the composer’s rhythmic and harmonic surprises.

It might be noted, too, that Perick doesn’t fall into a trap common among antiquarian conductors--that of playing all the minuets at the same (fast) tempo or with the same rhythmic articulation. In his hands, those of Nos. 38 and 82 partake of a certain lumbering quality, appropriate to the rustic weightiness suggested by many of Haydn’s dance movements. That of No. 104 is fast-paced and incisive, but with a certain grandiosity, the implication being that it is suitable only for the most accomplished, aristocratic dancers.

By contrast, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra seems in its latest outing (Erato 45807) to be operating under the principle that all Haydn minuets are for sprinters.

Furthermore, in the corner movements of three of the “Paris” symphonies--Nos. 82 (“The Hen”), 84 and 85 (“The Queen of France”)--conductor Ton Koopman’s usually reliable string players are not always quite together. There, the demand for optimum crispness results in that excessively clipped sound, posing as the end-all of period interpretation, one expects of leaders less astute than Koopman.

Although the complete edition of Haydn symphonies currently being set down for Hyperion by London’s Hanover Band, directed from the harpsichord by Roy Goodman, has shown signs of hasty preparation in some prior installments, the latest release, comprising three splendid “Sturm und Drang” symphonies--Nos. 43 (“Mercury”), 44 (“Mourning”) and the nicknameless 42, in D--should be ranked among the winners (66530).

The interpretations show a cleanly balanced ensemble under vigorous direction (and, typically of the series, too much harpsichord presence) that stops short of Koopman’s dizzying speeds and occasional dynamic eccentricities.

There’s more than casual interest, too, in the return (on budget-priced Vanguard/Everyman 5000) of a trio of Haydn symphonies recorded in the 1960s by a fine little New York pickup ensemble of modern instruments calling itself, in a fine Haydnesque gesture, the Esterhazy Orchestra. Their conductor was David Blum, better known nowadays as the author of astute and entertaining artists’ profiles in the New Yorker.

The energy and warmth of Blum’s shapely readings of the eerie No. 60 (“Il Distratto”) and the wittily learned Nos. 71 and 81 remain impressive and engaging, marking the conductor as a forerunner of today’s most informed and engaged Haydn practitioners--not the apostles of weirdness, but those who genuinely love and appreciate the composer’s endlessly provocative, off-center style.