EMA CD Reviews

These Handel and Haydn Society live concert performances of three key Haydn works from Symphony Hall in Boston in January 2015 are so comprehensively thought out, expertly put together, and commandingly played, it’s as if the Boston Symphony had been reborn playing on 18th-century instruments and modern copies.

Listening to Bruce Dickey play the cornetto, one could be forgiven for wondering how the instrument ever went out of fashion. His artistry is in full flight on his newest recording, “Breathtaking,” the culmination of a project to celebrate the affinity of the cornetto with the human voice based on tonal quality and articulation.

Over the last decade, New York Polyphony has developed a world-class reputation for stellar musicianship and programming dedicated to both early and contemporary music. On their sixth album, Roma Æterna, the singers — countertenor Geoffrey Williams, tenor Steven Caldicott Wilson, baritone Christopher Dylan Herbert, and bass Craig Phillips — break with their own tradition and return to the past, focusing for the first time exclusively on early music.

These are vibrant interpretations with a full-blooded orchestral texture and plenty of forward motion, and the solos are characterized by the artist’s customary imagination in phrasing. The engineering presents a well-delineated sound stage throughout, and careful miking picks up the pianist’s playing-along in opening tuttis, a nice combination of intimacy and grandeur.

The usual objective in such projects by period ensembles is to peel away layers of interpretive accretions laid on by conductors and modern orchestras to reveal what Beethoven originally had in mind. Not, of course, “what Beethoven heard,” for his deafness had advanced to the point where he could only discern faint sounds at the Ninth’s unveiling at the Kärtnertor Theatre in Vienna on May 7, 1824. The composer was onstage to set tempos, but the conducting duties were covered by others.