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Haydn : The Seven Last Words - The Lindsays - 1993.

Posted By: dakszhund
Haydn : The Seven Last Words - The Lindsays - 1993.

Haydn : The Seven Last Words - The Lindsays - 1993.
APE + CUE | TT: 70',32 | Covers | Booklet | 274 MB

Haydn : The Seven Last Words - The Lindsays - 1993.


I have avoided this music ever since I heard a poor performance, complete with several sermons, as a small boy. From that time, Haydn's Seven Last Words has always been associated in my mind with the longest day of my life. No longer shall I hold this view since this performance by the Lindsay Quartet is magical and it confirms them as something a bit more special than just our finest British quartet. There are, I suspect, few quartets who could sustain these seven slow movements, each lasting about ten minutes, and yet give them such variety of intensity, colour and mood. Come to think of it, with the wisdom of middle-age, I can now see that Haydn revealed himself as a visionary composer in the way he set about creating these seven miniature tone-poems for string quartet. The work is divided into nine sections comprising the seven slow movements each describing one of the final utterances of Christ on the Cross together with a slow introduction and a final Presto con tutta la forza which depicts the earthquake which occurred when ''the veil of the temple was rent in twain''. I suspect that some people may not find it a disc to be listened to from beginning to end; they may need substantial breaks between one movement and the next. In that case, they may end up with a shortened list of favourite movements: in my case, the wonderful view of Paradise in No. 2, the portrait of Christ's Mother in No. 3 and of the terrible energy of the earthquake in the final section. Highly recommended.'

Haydn's Op. 71 quartets, written between his two visits to London, are the first works of their kind to have been designed from theoutset for public performance, and their widely spaced sonorities are striking. The music is as wonderfully inventive as the contemporaneous London symphonies, and the Chilingirians do it proud. Only occasionally do they sound a little careful and over-refined: the pervasive octave leaps of Op. 71/1's opening movement lack forcefulness; and the rustic closing theme in the same work's finale could do with more swagger. The two Op. 77 quartets were the last Haydn completed. As he wrote them Beethoven was working on his first set of string quartets, dedicated to the same aristocratic patron. It is almost as though the continuity of the great quartet tradition had been preordained. The Franz Schubert Quartet plays this music (plus the later, unfinished, Quartet Op. 103) with obvious affection, though without quite plumbing its depths or catching its wit. The recording is distant and unfocused. The Seven Last Words, beautiful as they are, do not belong among the canon of Haydn's great quartets. They began life as orchestral pieces, and eight Adagios followed by an earthquake do not make for ideal listening. The Lindsay Quartet has often played these pieces interwoven with sermons, as Haydn intended. Hearing the music on its own is a demanding experience, but a deeply moving one – particularly when it is so fervently played.


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