This is Volume 4 in Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s project to record the\ncomplete piano sonatas of Haydn. The last volume in the series\n(CHAN10689) was a Critic’s Choice in Gramophone, an Instrumental\nChoice in the magazine BBC Music, Editor’s Choice in the magazine\nClassic FM, and Recording of the Month in MusicWeb\nInternational.

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In the words of Bavouzet himself: ‘Each volume of this\nambitious, extended project will arrive over the years like a\npostcard, dispatched during my travels with scant respect for\nchronological considerations, but undertaken with the greatest\npassion for trying to convey as vividly as possible to\ntwenty-first-century ears the boundless treasures of this sublime\nmusic.’

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He also notes: ‘We often forget how little information Haydn\nleft us in the scores of his keyboard works: few indications of\ndynamics or of phrasing, and the briefest guides to tempo. This\ntask is never anything other than absolutely fascinating, but for\nthe performer it is also testing, and even risky. He must, even\nmore than usual, create his own world, his own logic, left only to\nhope that, in the absence of tangible evidence, he will not\ndistance himself too far from the composer’s intentions, which\nremain forever unknowable.’

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Jean-Efflam Bavouzet received a BBC Music Award in 2012 and a\nGramophone Award in 2011 for his recording of works by Debussy and\nRavel (with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Yan Pascal Tortelier).\nHis recording of Bartók’s Concertos (with Gianandrea Noseda and the\nBBC Philharmonic) was short-listed for a Gramophone Award, and he\nhas won multiple awards for his recording of the complete works for\nsolo piano by Debussy, including a BBC Music Magazine Award for\nVolume 3 and a Gramophone Award for Volume 4.

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