Joseph Haydn: Complete Piano Sonatas - Authentic Period Instruments Recording | Perfect for Classical Music Lovers & Historical Performance Enthusiasts

... and Charm were prime aesthetic values of all the arts of the Rococo era, especially of music and particularly of the solo keyboard music of Joseph Haydn. The worst crime a pianist can commit against Haydn's sonatas is to overload them with romantic sonorities. To over-interpret them bombastically. I'm not pointing the finger at any other keyboardist here; rather I'm confessing the aesthetic bias that inclines me to relish Christine Schornsheim's performance of all of Haydn's 150 compositions for solo keyboard, on period instruments. Ms. Schornsheim discusses her her aesthetic choices, concerning period keyboards, on CD 14 of this monumental recording; that CD is one of the many inducements to acquiring the set. Schornsheim performs most of the pieces on fortepiano, with a few early compositions on harpsichord or clavichord.Another, and the most important, inducement is that Schornsheim plays very well. Her touch sounds to me like the reincarnation of an 18th C keyboardist, especially when she flies through the prestos and scherzandos. A German friend who listened to some of these disks with me, whose listening experience doesn't include many "historically informed" performances, kept asking "Is it supposed to be that fast?" I didn't answer him. I'm heartily sick of the debate about modern versus historic instruments. Frankly, it's the wrong debate; the aesthetic choices of the performer, assuming proper technique, are more important than the choice of instrument, especially on a recording where volume-production is of no matter. The recreation of historic instruments during the past decades was (and still is) a method of comprehending the musical intentions of the composers, of grasping the aesthetics that determined the nature of the music. Many performers, especially those whose aspirations were not dominated by career ambitions, have chosen to explore the possibilities of historic instruments for insights into historic music - "classical" music, so called - because that music had become as dulled with romanticism as a Rembrandt painting with varnish.This is a 14-volume set, my friends! Even at full price here in the 'zoo, it's a bargain! I haven't found time to listen to all 14 CDs yet, and I expect to do so at leisure over a period of months, but I'm excited/delighted about the ones I've heard so far. The alternate sellers are worth considering, and I got my set even cheaper from amazon.de, so let's declare this the "Bruno Pick of the Month Novemeber 09".Another tip: if you can accept the reduced acoustic quality of an MP3 download, notice that the whole 14-CD set can be purchased for $8.95! Get it now, before the zookeepers realize what they've offered.