Haydn: The Seasons

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JOSEPH HAYDN
Haydn: The Seasons
Marlis Petersen, Werner Güra & Dietrich Henschel / RIAS Kammerchor & Freiburger Barockorchester, René Jacobs

[ Harmonia Mundi / 2 CD ]

Release Date: Monday 10 February 2014

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Gramophone Magazine Editor's Choice - Awards Issue 2004
Gramophone Awards 2005 Winner - Choral
Radio3 Building a Library First Choice - March 2008

Haydn's The Seasons is a two-hour vocal work that praises God and nature and orchestrally imitates croaking frogs and lambs that gambol. It could easily seem slightly out of kilter with the times in which we live, but its proto-ecological message has perhaps never been more relevant, its sublimely fresh and vernal musical language a painful reminder of lost environmental innocence.

And this recording of the piece is notably successful in communicating that message. Beautifully conducted by René Jacobs, it offers elasticity of rhythm and a bright alfresco atmosphere. The three soloists have just the right plenitude of tone and timbre (as in Summer, their mellifluous hymn to the sun) while the RIAS Kammerchor's singing combines technical precision with a striking ease of utterance (the closing chorus of Spring is typical of their outstanding contribution).

This is a fresh and articulate Seasons for an era that most definitely needs it.

"It would be hard to imagine a more joyful account of Haydn's culminating masterpiece. René Jacobs and his outstanding team perfectly capture the exuberance with which the composer seemed to be defying the years." (Gramophone Magazine, October 2004)

"Front runners among recordings of The Seasons have long been the inspiriting period-instrument performance from John Eliot Gardiner and the 1968 recording in English from BBC forces under Colin Davis (Philips). This new version matches them in colour, vigour and choral and orchestral brilliance, and arguably surpasses them in joyous exhilaration." (BBC Music Magazine, November 2004)