Ordinary Moments, Everyday Life
Last summer Richard Linklater's movie Boyhood was met with much acclaim. The film follows, in a sort of "real time," the life of a kid named Mason over a period of 12 years.  The story is revealed through a series of snapshots. The thing is, nothing happens really-except that life happens with all its joys and pains.
Mason's parents fight, they divorce, his dad visits periodically. There's a move to a new city, high school shenanigans, a first girlfriend, a first breakup, everyday interactions with mom and sister filled with both love and frustration… Ordinary moments filmed over 12 years are condensed into two-and-a-half hours of unfettered fascination: everyday people living the everyday subtleties of life.
Conductor Giovanni Antonini seems to think of Joseph Haydn in much the same way.
In the liner note to Il Giardino Armonico's Alpha productions recording Haydn 2032 - La Passione, Antonini writes, "[Haydn] wasn't just a great composer who mastered the rules of music; he was an artist who understood life. He was able to address various aspects of life and describe them with his means…"
Antonini continues, "When I listen to the Andante from his [Haydn's] First Symphony, I think of a man who casually indulges in ideas. This man is one of us. Haydn doesn't show him in extremes, in angry or desperate poses. He shows him in his everyday life…"
Not that everyday life is boring, mind you… As Linklater captivated audiences with depth and richness rather than formulaic Hollywood-style dramatization, so does Haydn. This is what Antonini calls "the ordinary" in Haydn's music, describing it as a thing that besides the mundane encompasses passions, melancholy, excitement, diversity, contradiction.
Because after all, that's what life is like too.
The Andante from Haydn's first symphony that Antonini describes is music filled with its own internal harmonic clashes, diversity of musical themes, and contradictory dynamics.
La Passione
Il Giardino Armonico's performance is far from heady or intellectual. There is plenty of overt excitement in the ensemble's playing that given their tight ensemble sound and unified approach could only be achieved with a great deal of self-control. Passion without control can quickly turn to pandemonium, and this performance is anything but. To quote Antonini just one more time, "passion needs rules. Part of you has to stay cool and always in control, or chaos will break out…there's plenty of freedom in Haydn, but only within a fixed framework."
This recording is titled "La Passione" after Haydn's f minor symphony no. 49 of the same name.
Il Giardino Armonico
The zest and vitality of Il Giardino Armonico's playing pervades the whole CD package. Much thought and care went into making the product a cohesive whole in the ensemble's usual modish manner. Accompanying the CD is a 70-page booklet that features an entire series of artsy photos and an story-essay titled Passion by a German author/songwriter/cabaret artist. The booklet almost reads like a magazine and is enjoyable in its own right.
2032
Haydn 2032 La Passione is the first volume of what will be a full cycle of Haydn's symphonies that looks forward to the 300th anniversary of the composer's birth.
This first disc centers around Haydn's Sturm und Drang period, pairing two of Haydn's Symphonies-Nos. 39 & 49-with Gluck's Don Juan, a seminal work in the Sturm und Drang movement of the 1760s.
The second installment of Il Giardino Armonico's Haydn 2032 series titled Il Filosofo has also been released-this one pairs Haydn symphonies with music by W.F. Bach. It will be interesting to follow the development of this project in the coming years to see what choices the group makes and how their ideas will evolve over time.
