Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 99-104.(Sound Recording Review)

Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 99-104. Sir Thomas Beecham, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. EMI 7243 5 85513-2 (2-disc set).

Time was, you couldn't mention the late Haydn symphonies without mentioning Sir Thomas Beecham. The symphonies were among his treasures, and he spent a lifetime playing and perfecting them before recording them in stereo late in his career in 1959. The maestro's experience shows, and for most of the late fifties and sixties, the Beecham records held sway.

By the late sixties and mid seventies, however, other conductors had come along to provide Beecham some competition: Klemperer and Jochum in particular. Then came Colin Davis, Slatkin, Mackerras, Kuijken, Goodman, and others. But now that I've returned to these recordings, I see little reason to question their authority as the overall best of the lot.

Oh, there are individual favorites I still retain, like Klemperer in "The Clock" and Jochum in the "Military" Symphony, but as a set, these final six of Haydn's twelve "London" Symphonies from Beecham are hard to beat. They're called the "London" Symphonies, of course, because they were written by Haydn while he was temporarily living in London. Four of the final six have descriptive nicknames that call them easily to mind: No. 100, the "Military" because of its march and the martial sound of its percussive instrumentation; No. 101, the "Clock" because of its second movement imitation of a clock's second hand ticking; No. 103, the "Drum Roll" ...