Anglo-French pianist
Julia Cload's Haydn keyboard sonata cycle, one of a truly impressive number released around the 200th anniversary of Haydn's death in 2009, coincided with a series of concerts given at London's prestigious Wigmore Hall. Her readings here, in the fourth volume of her cycle, cover early and middle-period sonatas. They're old-school performances, on a modern piano, with lots of resonance in the hall and generous use of the pedal.
Cload's chief virtue is a strong sense of the long line, something that has served her well in the late sonatas covered in other albums in the series. She builds the outer movements of each sonata out of a series of rather episodic utterances, set off by an unusual degree of rubato. These impressively coalesce into wholes and never fall apart, rewarding repeated listenings and providing fresh testimony to the depth of Haydn's structural thinking. But on those same repeated listenings the murky ringing of the piano can begin to tire. Perhaps better heard in pieces than straight through, this album is accompanied by detailed booklet notes, in English only, examining each of the nine sonatas; they are well matched to the nature of the performance.