HAYDN: Piano Variations

Jandó, Jenő

8.553972

A fascinatingly diverting disc in all respects. The engaging if over-long piano duet, Il Maestro lo Scolare (with the two-part dialogue nicely separated on a single piano in the recording) was transcribed from a baryton trio in 1766/8. It opens with an echo of Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith and (obviously a teacher-pupil exercise) gets progressively more difficult. The closing section is a Minuet—from Haydn’s String Quartet No. 20, Op. 9/2, while the Capriccio takes a folk song as its basis with the unlikely title of Acht Sauschnider müssen sein (‘It takes eight to castrate a boar’) and the variations on the famous Emperor theme are a transcription of the slow movement of the string quartet with that nickname, Op. 76/1. Jenő Jandó plays everything in his freshly direct, classical manner and he is expertly joined by Zsuzsa Kollár in the four-handed work. The recording is clear and clean.

CD

Muzyka klasyczna

Naxos

03-01-2006

730099497220