Haydn - Symphony No.96

Just over a year ago I posted  Joseph Haydn's 52nd Symphony, written around 1771, and this time it's a symphony composed twenty years later. on the first of Haydn's visits to London in 1791 at the invitation of Johann Salomon - who apart from being a composer and conductor was also an impresario with a shrewd eye for making money.

Joseph Haydn

From 1762 onwards Johann Christian Bach had made his home in London and subsequently became known as the "London Bach" - I posted one of his symphonies a short while ago. The musical appetite of London audiences was ripe for further exploitation with German compositions and Haydn was happy to oblige - composing 12 symphonies for his two seasons in London. In these symphonies (93 to 104) Haydn had grown the symphony from court diversion to public event. Tom Service has written:

"By the time Haydn was preparing for his second visit to London, he knew what to expect from his audiences. He knew how much this middle-class audience of concert-goers – among the first properly public, as opposed to aristocratic, audiences for symphonic music in history – understood and appreciated his invention, his games of expectation and surprise, his effortless manipulation of genre, affect, and expressivity. And he knew he could push them and himself even further when he came back, when his celebrity and status were even greater than before. That means these symphonies are, in effect, palimpsests of listening, pieces composed with their effectiveness for a musically literate audience in mind. Haydn needed to keep surprising his London audiences, and to do that, he became still more skilful and economical – as well as bold and chandelier-breakingly shocking – in his deployment of his symphonic resources."

Tom Service's article is really concerned about Symphony No.102 - the first performance of which had the miraculous event of a falling chandelier narrowly missing the audience because they had pressed up against the stage thus leaving an unpopulated hole for the errant light fitting to fall into. This story has been erroneously applied to Symphony No.96 which forevermore bears the nickname "Miracle".

Like my post of Symphony No.52, this performance of Symphony No.96 is also a Philips recording, but benefits from a more sympathetic acoustic - presumably the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, since Colin Davis is conducting that very orchestra. It's part of a splendid set of all the 12 London Symphonies.

Cartridge: Ortofon Xpression MC

Phono amp: Graham Slee Accession MC

Turntable: CTC Classic 301 with SME M2-12R