The portrait of the composer on the box cover — by the little-known Thomas Hardy (1757–1804) from the Royal College of Music in London — reveals all the urbanity, humanity, and dignity of the great man whose bicentenary we are celebrating this year: it engages the viewer with that same immediacy of warmth and good humour that we find in his music. (There is an interesting essay by Alan Davison on this portrait on the RCM website.) A label on the front of the box claims that it contains ‘all 104 symphonies’ — a rare example of marketing understatement as there are in fact 107 (including the unnumbered A, B, and C from about 1760) as well as several alternative versions of movements and for good measure the winsome sinfonia concertante for wind and strings that was first performed along with the first London symphonies in 1792. Dorati’s fine performances with the Philharmonia Hungarica (an orchestra founded in Germany in 1957 by his Hungarian compatriots escaping the repressions in their own country) were made in the early 1970s, just before the full emergence of the more historically informed performing styles that are now so much a feature of recordings of 18th-century music. For all that, I have always found these performances to be models of refined and joyous music-making, lithe and energetic, brimming with vitality, and yet sensitive and tender where the music calls for these qualities. Returning to them now, I have been enjoying them more than ever.
It is a particular delight to pick out some of the less familiar works: throw the dice and see where they lead you, or play one you know and let the player run on into the next. Some key moments for me have been the haunting Lamentatione, no. 26, which draws on plainchant in its first two movements; No. 22, The Philosopher, with its processional opening movement and prominent cor anglais (beautifully played); No. 27, a fine G major three-movement work; the ripely sonorous horns in No. 31, the ‘Horn Signal’, with their magical delayed entry in the moderato molto (!) finale; strong early signs of ‘storm and stress’ in no. 39 (in the significant key of G minor); no. 41, a dignified large-scale C major work with a lovely andante including a prominent wind band; the deeply contemplative adagio of no. 54; a poised and finely pointed performance of no. 77 in B flat; the vigour and verve of the more wayward no. 89 in F, taken by the scruff of the neck; the slow movements of no. 99 (see below) and no. 102 (which Haydn also used in a piano trio); the purposeful and finely phrased ticking of the clock in no. 101; and a fine account of the sinfonia concertante. Everyone will have his or her own favourites, — and will make new discoveries.
Fashions may have changed (we might sometimes expect faster tempi in outer movements, for example) and much progress has indeed been made in performance style, especially in some of the earlier works where a smaller band with instruments of the period would produce a leaner and more authentic timbre (if that is what you want). Dorati has his quirks, such as a tendency to turn minuets into quasi-ländler on occasions (e.g. in no.102 and no.104) and some inconsistency over repeats in the later works, but these tend to be endearing more than off-putting. One can have reservations about this or that symphony, and there will be treasured performances of individual works that one would not want to be without (Furtwängler in no. 88, for example, or Beecham in no. 99 with its heartfelt adagio second movement perhaps written in memory of his beloved friend and confidante Marianna von Genzinger, who had died earlier in the year); there is also stiffer competition in the more highly celebrated Paris and London sets. But these are landmarks along the way, whereas Dorati gives us the whole journey from start to finish; his survey is a classic of the gramophone that has been given a new lease of life in this fine set. It has never been so easy or inexpensive to acquire, and for those who like me were impecunious students when the original LPs (46 of them) were issued there will be fewer excuses for missing out this time round. The booklet contains track information but no notes on the music; these can be supplied easily enough from elsewhere, such as H C Robbins Landon’s remarkable BBC Guide, a paragon of concise distillation for the general reader of a lifetime’s work on the music of Haydn that is matched in performance by this magnificent musical treasure trove.

Reviewed by Robert Allen