The program heard on this release from Munich's Orfeo label is one that might have been heard in London in the years after 1800. The Haydn vocal pieces and piano trios presented date from the later part of his career and are related to the composer's two extended visits to London in the 1790s. All are lighter works, but the question for the performer is how light to make them. The six so-called English Canzonettas are compact but expressive English-language songs with delightful twists worked into a basic strophic structure. The Scottish Songs, from the set composed for the publisher George Thomson around 1801, are simpler still; they are harmonizations of melodies provided to the composer (without the Scots texts). Yet they are more than arrangements; most are elaborated in the accompaniment with musical details that amplify the mood or some musical detail of the song. The most ambitious works are the two trios, one of which has the familiar "gypsy" finale in G major. Each of these works is attractively and expertly presented but perhaps taken a notch beyond the weight where it most naturally lies. German soprano
Julie Kaufmann, who has recorded Wagner and other vocal music of the late nineteenth century, offers distinctive legato phrasing but seems a little bit out of her element. The accompaniments, on modern instruments, force her to deliver the texts at higher volume than that at which they would have been heard in an eighteenth century drawing room. The trios are done in a strangely tense way, with a missing sense of fun in the outer movements. Probably the strongest are
Kaufmann's Canzonettas, with her grasp of the subtle emotional currents of a song like "Pleasing Pain." The program here is a good idea and ought to be replicated by others, and the musicians are nowhere less than competent. But it's possible to find any of these pieces done in a more satisfying way.