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Joseph Haydn:
Symphony No.104 in D major ‘London’, arranged for pianoforte by Carl David Stegmann (2021)
ed. Sarah Jenner
Edition HH, hh517.sol, Launton, 2021
(pbk, £14.50)
www.editionhh.co.uk
This edition of Carl David Stegmann’s arrangement for solo piano of Haydn’s Symphony No.104, known as the ‘London’ Symphony, is the tenth such work to be published by Edition HH Ltd under the editorship of Sarah Jenner. It is much to be welcomed, adding as it does to our knowledge of the means by which the symphonic repertoire was made available to those who had access to a piano (and a player skillful enough to manage the notes) before the advent of recording.
In addition to his arrangement of a total of 31 of Haydn’s symphonic output for solo piano, Stegmann also arranged Beethoven’s Trios Op.9 for solo piano and Mozart’s String Quintets for piano duet. The choice of these particular works for arrangement is of course an indication of the importance given to them at the time: the Bonn-based publisher Simrock, who issued the Hadyn arrangements in 1819, would assuredly not have produced them if he had not been certain of their saleability, despite being a personal friend of the arranger.
Stegmann arranged the symphonies around 1813, when he was in his early 60s. By this time his career as a singer was over (he had been a successful tenor, taking part in the first German-language performance of Don Giovanni in 1789 in Mainz), but he continued to be well-known in Germany as a composer, opera conductor, actor and keyboard-player. His skill in the latter department is well illustrated in the present arrangement, which fits under the hands beautifully and manages to capture the spirit and character of the symphony as well as its melodic and harmonic individuality. The far from ubiquitous Alberti bass accompaniment is effectively expanded, for example, in the G minor episode in the Andante.
While one perhaps misses the weight of the full orchestra (double wind, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings) in passages such as the glorious B flat major episode from bar 60 in the same movement, the sonority of the orchestra is mostly very convincingly suggested, with pianistic touches such as the cross-hands employed in the imitation of the flute in the bars preceding the first Allegro. While (in common with many piano scores of this period) the use of the sustaining pedal is not marked in the score, it is obviously implied, for example in the opening double octaves that announce the tonic-dominant of the first bars of the Adagio introduction. Overall, the writing for the piano suggests that Stegmann had in mind the recent developments of the instrument as regards timbre and resonance that were particularly noticeable in the pianos of Broadwood’s manufacture.
Sarah Jenner has supplied editorial notes, within which she mentions ‘some minor differences in articulation and dynamics from Haydn’s orchestral original’, though these are not indicated in the score as Jenner considers them as ‘an attempt to adapt the orchestral material to a more idiomatic pianoforte texture’. Much of the content of the notes relates to Haydn’s first visit to England in 1791. This emphasis is also apparent in the cover illustration, a near-contemporary lithograph of Hanover Square, in the Rooms of which Haydn’s six symphonies of 1791-2 were first performed. While interesting, the notes are therefore unfortunately not so relevant to Symphony No.104 itself which dates from the second visit of 1794-5 and was, as Haydn himself proudly noted on the autograph score, ‘the 12th that I have composed in England’. Jenner thus misses the opportunity to mention Burney’s appreciation of Haydn’s works heard for the first time on this second visit. Following the conclusion of the concert series at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket, Burney characteristically enthused that they were ‘such as were never heard before, of any mortal’s production; of what Apollo & the Muses compose or perform we can only judge by such productions as these’.
There is an error in the notes concerning the date of the first performance of the symphony which Jenner gives as 13 April 1795, but which Haydn himself, in his diary, records as 4 May. The occasion was a resounding success: it is satisfying to note that Haydn wrote that ‘the whole company was thoroughly pleased and so was I. I made 4000 gulden on this evening: such as thing is only possible in England’. Would that it were still so!
We are grateful to the The Consort for permission to reproduce this review.
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Full score and parts