Recording Information
Recording Date: August &
October 1986
Recording Location: Helsingborg Concert house, Sweden
Produced by: Francis Noorren
Balance Engineer: Göran Finnberg
Format: DDD Stereo
Label: Big Ben Phonogram
UPC: 048657100841
Product Code: 486-571-008-4
Haydn's symphonies have
more pure fun in them than those of any other
composer. Symphony No. 88 used to have a nickname,
"The Letter V," but no one knows how it got the name
or what it means. Nevertheless, it's one of Haydn's
best, with a delicious bagpipe-like episode in the
minuet, and a slow movement that prompted Brahms to
exclaim, "I want my tenth symphony to sound like
that!" Nos. 89 and 90 are equally delicious, but far
less well known. This is a pity, for they are full of
fine music, and No. 90 features some fantastic writing
to timpani and high horns. David Hurwitz The
Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra originated in 1912, one
of the first Swedish symphony orchestras. It was
originally of the size of a chamber orchestra but
today numbers some 51 musicians, giving some sixty
concerts a year, in Helsingborg and the southern areas
of Sweden. In 1988 the orchestra undertook its first
foreign tour with a visit to Berlin, followed by tours
to Poland and the then Czechoslovakia and subsequently
to the United States of America and to Spain. The
German conductor Hans-Peter Frank directed the
orchestra throughout the 1980s and in 1991 Okko Kamu
was appointed chief conductor. The Helsingborg Concert
Hall acoustics created by the architect Sven Markelius
have aroused great international interest and have
served as a model for manymore recently built concert
houses.
