Michael Haydn: Notturni

These pieces of "night music" were composed in Salzburg in the early 1770s; traces of them show up all over the early occasional music of Mozart, who must have heard them or those like them. The outer works on the disc are quintets for two violins, two violas, and cello, lightly accompanied by a harpsichord continuo (did they set the harpsichords up out-of-doors?), while the central notturno adds two very circumspectly treated horns. Michael Haydn did not have his brother's, or Mozart's, ability to shape the raw materials of this kind of light music into arresting forms, but his talents come through in small details and in his elegant ways of varying what would normally be repeated passages. He has a way with unexpected treatments of phrase ends -- hear the emergence of the pizzicato strings from the background in the Adagio movement of the first Notturno as one of the cadences is approached, or the odd minor to major cadences in the last movement. The minuets have daring contrasts between minuet and trio that show why so many of Michael Haydn's works got misattributed to his brother or to Mozart back in the day. The players of the Savaria Baroque Orchestra (despite the name, there is only one player per part) are Hungarian; Savaria was the Roman name of the Hungarian city of Szombathely. They promise better things from the young authentic-instrument scene in their country, with bright instrumental colors and a quiet yet lively sound that adds up to music as beautifully suited to playing on the patio on a summer night today as it was in 1772. ~ James Manheim, All Music Guide