MICHAEL HAYDN : Symphonies, Vol. 1 (2016) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

This album, the first in a series devoted to the 41 symphonies of Michael Haydn, leads off with perhaps the most historically famous one of all: the Sinfonia in G major, Perger 16, is none other than the missing Symphony No. 37 of Mozart, which was not removed from the Mozart canon until 1907. The reason for the error was that a copy of the work exists in Mozart's handwriting; he wrote a slow introduction to the first movement (not performed here), and apparently copied out the piece in preparation. It remains difficult to believe that listeners' suspicions weren't raised before that; the work's simple, squarish movements resemble those of the symphonies Mozart wrote in his mid-teens. The Sinfonia in D major (Perger 21), with its larger dimensions, comes a good deal closer to Mozart. The four symphonies are all tuneful, well constructed, and they benefit from the relaxed, slightly jocular performances by the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice (in whose hall the music was nicely recorded) under Patrick Gallois. An interesting feature of the music is the retention of the harpsichord parts, which seems justified in view of the cadenza-like passages in which they emerge from the background. Not Mozart by any stretch, but recommended for Classical period buffs. by James Manheim 

MICHAEL HAYDN : Symphonies, Vol. 2 (2016) FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

This is part of a series of releases on the Naxos label devoted to the 40 symphonies of Michael Haydn, younger brother of Franz Joseph. These have been commercially successful, and it's easy to see why: there's music of unsuspected high quality here, and you can see why the younger Haydn's work was taken for Mozart's in several cases for decades, and why Mozart, who was spare in his praise of other composers, bestowed it upon this one. All four of these symphonies are in the three-movement form that Mozart had mostly left behind by the late 1770s and 1780s (when the Haydn works were composed), but the individual movements are quite confidently handled, with the elegant but harmonically wide-ranging slow movements perhaps the best of the lot. Sample that of the Sinfonia in E flat major marked "Adagietto affettuoso" and making use of string mutes. The booklet makes much of the solo violin and cor anglais in the Sinfonia in F major, but the tightly constructed first movement in the opening Sinfonia in D major, with its weighty slow introduction, is equally noteworthy. The Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice does not produce a silken string tone, but perhaps this was what the music sounded like when first played; it is, in any event, good to have this music on recordings, and you'll come away from it thinking that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was more deeply marked by his time in Salzburg (where Michael Haydn edged out Leopold Mozart for a top job) than you realized. by James Manheim  

Contemporaries of Mozart : MICHAEL HAYDN - Symphonies (1996) Mp3