Dip Your Ears, No. 155 (Haydn with Sudbin)
  J.Haydn, Three Sonatas , Fantasia in C, Andante con Variazioni, Yevgeny Sudbin BIS SACD 1788      |
Sublime Lark
Out of Haydn’s ~62 Keyboard Sonatas, Yevgeny Sudbin picks some of the choicest morsels (47, 53, 60), true. But that’s not the reason why his recital is such a breath of fresh air and tremendously witty success. Haydn is the Alpha and Omega of musical phrasing, his sonatas all gems, but in truth not all recitals make that as obvious as Alfred Brendel did. Jean-Efflam Bavouzet now surveys Haydn successfully on Chandos, but it is Sudbin’s one-off among recent Haydn releases that sparkles the most. The Fantasia in C and Andante and Variations in F further add to the mix, as does Sudbin’s free-wheeling arrangement of the Finale of the “Lark Quartet”. Named “Larking with Haydn”, it’s emblematic of the spirit of this desert-island-disc.
