Haydn and Mozart Compliment Each Other

Claire-Marie Le Guay adds a lightness of touch and authority to these great composers.

Composer: Haydn, Mozart
Repertoire: Piano Sonatas in B flat, Hob XVI:2 & in E flat, Hob XVI:49 (Haydn); Piano Sonatas in E flat, K282 & in B flat, K570 (Mozart)
Artists: Claire-Marie Le Guay (piano)

Rating: 4/5

Genre: Instrumental

Label: Universal Accord 476 9154

Haydn and Mozart have often been compared, usually to the former’s disadvantage. Claire-Marie Le Guay’s new series, featuring the piano sonatas of both composers, will prove fascinating. On this disc the honours are about even. Haydn’s early work is charming, no more, while Mozart’s E flat sonata confounds expectation by beginning with a romantic Adagio. On the other hand, Mozart’s K570 of 1789 seems rather conventional beside Haydn’s roughly contemporary masterpiece. Le Guay plays with beautiful clarity – nicely pointed syncopation in the Allegretto of K570 – and she finds powerful emotion in the middle section of the Adagio e cantabile of Hob XVI:49, the sonata that Haydn wrote for his friend Marianne von Genzinger.