1999 Delos CD featuring Paul Galbraith playing his 8-string-guitar transcriptions of Haydn's Keyboard Sonatas Hob.XVI Nos. 2, 44, 46, and 47.
The playing is crisp, flawless, and subtly dramatic; the music,
elegant. The transcriptions may not get every note of the ten-fingered
originals, but get pretty close (including managing guitar trills).
Galbraith's Bach recording from the year before won a Gramophone "Best
of the Year" award.
From the Fanfare review:
Haydn was a composer rigorously grounded in his time and culture, and unabashedly transcendent of both. His oeuvre of piano sonatas presents further evidence of the same. The earliest transcend the Rococo by looking backward to the keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. The last whimsically go beyond the languages of Mozart and early Beethoven. That Haydn may have known of those Scarlatti pieces is pure conjecture on my part. I do know, however, that Haydn gained some early musical tutelage at the hands of Nicholas Poporra, and therefore might have come across them. In any event, those Scarlatti sonatas transcribe most idiomatically to the guitar. This all-too-brief collection of Haydn keyboard sonatas, selectively spanning his early to mid career, likewise transcribes most effectively to the guitar, though, I must add, the guitar on this release is a special hybrid eight-string instrument concocted by luthier David Rubino at the transcriber and performer's behest. The result is both illuminating and striking. Paul Galbraith's transcriptions artfully and often tellingly find solutions to Haydn's left-hand harmonic underpinnings and his right-hand figurations. His performances are crystal-clear, nigh-on perfectly articulated, and amiably relaxed even at their quickest moments. In them Haydn virtually becomes Domenico Scarlatti in Hob XVI:2 and Hob XVI:44, and Sor and Coste in Hob XVI:46 and Hob XVI:46, and XVI:47 ... to the mutual glory of all concerned. This collection will not supplant the piano originals, but will serve as an indispensable adjunct to them. What emerges will be of interest not only to guitarists but to all Haydnites. --William Zagorski
Disc, booklet, and case are in near-mint condition.
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