Orchestra of St. Luke's new principal conductor Bernard Labadie discusses Haydn's une | 2018-10-21 21:31:11 (Visits: 628 Times) |  | | 1,Orchestra of St. Luke's performing Mozart's 'Jupiter' at Carnegie Hall on Feb. 7, 2018. (Steve J. Sherman)
2,Bernard Labadie conducting Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall on Feb. 7, 2018. (Steve J. Sherman)
BY CATHERINE YANG, EPOCH TIMES
October 10, 2018 Updated: October 18, 2018
We remember him as “Papa Haydn,” father of the symphony and mentor to Mozart and Beethoven, and the composer of happy music. But as a composer, his impact on music of his time and subsequent ages is so much more.
“He is a genius of the highest order for me,” said Bernard Labadie, a leading conductor of 18th-century music and now the new principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL).
“I think he is the most underrated great master of the late 18th century.”
He thinks Haydn’s reputation has suffered from clichés.
This season, the ensemble is pairing a Haydn piece in each of its Carnegie Hall Orchestra Series programs.
The series kicks off on Oct. 25 with two massive masterworks: Mozart’s Requiem, which is popular but no less profound for it, and Haydn’s “Nelson Mass” in the same key, performed with Labadie’s own choir La Chapelle de Québec. If you do think of Haydn as a composer of simply happy and gentle music, this will change your mind.
“So the real name is ‘Missa in Angustiis,’ which means ‘Mass in a time of anxiety,'” Labadie explained.
The work was meant to be for the name day of Princess Maria Josefa, the wife of Haydn’s employer Prince Nicholas II. Yet war waged nearby in Austria as Napoleon’s troops grew closer and closer.“It’s a very special piece that has also an unusual orchestration because it doesn’t feature woodwinds; it uses only trumpets, timpani, strings, and organ,” Labadie said. “Mostly because when Haydn wrote that mass, his boss had dismissed most of the orchestra because of the war.”
“Because of that, the trumpets and the timpani in the orchestra have a striking impact; they really come out as a reminder of the war that is raging not so far from where Haydn lives at that moment,” Labadie said.
Between the Requiem and this Mass, from the first bars of the program to the last, the connected themes of not just death but also redemption flow throughout.It’s Not ‘Historical’ Music
Haydn was a prolific composer whose work more or less spans the Classical era, of which Labadie is a specialist.
An enormity of church music was written in the Baroque era, filling it with polyphony and counterpoint; and then from the secular side, music of the courts was influenced by dance. As one era flowed into the next, music was becoming increasingly accessible, culminating in a period of tremendous creativity.
“This is a moment of great transformation in humanity. It is the Enlightenment. It is the awakening of man’s interest for science, for philosophy, and these principles can be seen, heard—they are embedded in the music,” Labadie said. “It is a period when the music comes out of churches and courts and becomes available to a much wider community.”Haydn himself contributed tremendously to music’s transformation during that time. Besides his influence on Beethoven and Mozart, who are programmed far more often than Haydn is—despite his being their equal—he was also known for having a surprising sense of humor, Labadie said.
“It’s not so much on display in the ‘Nelson Mass,’ which is such a tragic piece, but in the symphonies it’s there aplenty,” Labadie said. “Amazing sense of humor and a wit unlike any other, almost a sense of pranks. He always surprises the listener: We have over 100 symphonies from him, and there’s not a single one that sounds like the other one. There’s always a twist. There’s always something you don’t expect.”
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