Palestrina: Volume 5 – Christophers

   in Early Music Today (Jun, 2016)
Haydn’s op. 50 Quartets may forgo the overt jocularity that made his previous op. 33 set so popular, but you know his sense of humour is undiminished when the first of these later quartets begins with an ending! He not only opens with gestures usually associated with a concluding fall – repeated cello murmurs, sighing higher strings – he then fashions the entire movement out of this meagre material. As Richard Wigmore observes in his exemplary booklet-notes, the op. 50 quartets are ‘music about music: rigorously, obsessively argued, delighting in making much of little.’ Nevertheless, Haydn’s wit continues to work its magic, confounding listeners’ expectations by making mischief with sonata-form conventions …