Various Artists - Haydn Symphonies 2 / Various - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Willoughby Bertie, Fourth Earl of Abingdon, was among the leading English musical amateurs in late 18th century London, a composer himself and a noted patron.

Social Graces is the debut album from Australian post-punk outfit Loose Fit. Made up of Kaylene Miller, Anna Langdon, Max edgar and Richard Martin. Kaylene and Anna met in fashion school and instantly bonded through their love of experimental music. After toying with lo-fi bedroom re-cordings, the pair recruited Max edgar on guitar and Richard Martin on bass and started making some actual noise. Kaylene is also behind the cult knotwear brand WAH-WAH Australia with items worn by Noel Fielding, Courtney Barnett and even Kim Gordon. The band's rhythm-heavy sound contains echoes of UK post-punk titans such as PiL and A Certain Ratio.

For her first solo outing on Glossa, entitled Haydn and the harp, Chiara Granata presents a gorgeous demonstration, full of elegance and refinement, of the importance of the harp in the Classical era - and of Franz Joseph Haydn's significant contribution to it's development. Granata's selection demonstrates how composers strove to get the most out of the harp by pushing for experimental technical demands without forcing it's sound or calling for unnatural tempi; this was often with Haydn being involved in providing advice to composers and performers alike. As further witnesses of Haydn's penchant for the harp Chiara Granata includes in her programme a selection of folk melodies from the British Isles arranged by the composer, then (in Stendhal's words) Inchfull of glory and yearInch. Here she is joined by countertenor Raffaele Pe, violinist Anaïs Chen and cellist Marco Ceccato. Other composers utilized Haydn's compositions as inspiration for their own, as can be heard in Nicolas-Charles Bochsa's Petite Mosaique sur La Creation d'Haydn or even made arrangements of his symphonies, such as was the case with Louis-Charles Ragué. Chiara Granata (a pupil of that treasured Glossa artist, Mara Galassi) plays two instruments built at the time of the compositions making up this delightful programme a Holtzman harpe à crochet and a single-action harp by Naderman, the latter employed for the solo tour de force that is Boscha's Petite Mosaique.