Almost exactly five years ago, I wrote about an obsessive love I developed for the slow movement of a late Haydn string quartet - a post which included a homemade recording of my own piano transcription of this music. I believed then, as I still do, that this arrangement would rank as the best slow movement from any of Haydn's 50-plus piano sonatas, although you are free to disagree. [This, starting at 8:23, would likely be the closest competitor, but I am admittedly not a Haydn connoisseur.] My one frustration had been that the recording was made on my own piano which was not in great shape at the time - oh, and a kind YouTube commenter pointed out a wrong note in m.10, so that had always bothered me. [There were likely other wrong notes, and certainly some imprecisions, but this one - which I had misprinted in my arrangement - was just stupid wrong, although it doesn't sound bad.]
So, during these last few weeks of summer, I found a few days when I had access to a really nice piano, and I decided now would be the time to re-record it. Two issues: 1) I hadn't played or practiced it since 2021, and it is tricky in places, 2) The room where I was recording turned out to have some AC issues which meant that workers would interrupt. Yesterday, when I finally managed to record in relative peace, the AC unit would still come bursting on about every 5-6 minutes, then stay on for 1-2 minutes, then shut off. This meant there was no way I could do a complete take, but see point #1 above. There was honestly some relief in not worrying about getting everything in one take.
Bearing in mind the old "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good" wisdom, I figured I could either deal with these realities or probably never get around to doing this. So, here I present my "Take Two" recording of the Adagio sostenuto movement from Haydn's String Quartet in G Major, Op. 76, No. 1. I was quite surprised, when editing the video, that the timing matched my 2021 recording very closely for much of the movement, so I guess my ideas haven't changed; but it's nice to hear a better tuned piano.
There is a lot of good detail about this music in the original post, so I would recommend you go there to see more about why I love it so much. I will only add that I gave myself some interpretive freedom, especially related to articulation. There is a lot of use of staccato in the original quartet version, but in many cases, the staccato effect on a string instrument ends up sounding kind of like normal piano articulation where attacks are always naturally sharper. In other words, I didn't overkill on staccato, favoring (I hope) melodic integrity and phrasing.
I will add that, since my previous Aug 6 post discusses Augmented Sixth Chords, this movement features multiple conventional uses of the German Sixth chord. The one in the second phrase (m.14-15) is the typical, intensified cadential approach where the standard Pre-Dominant harmony (in this case a IV chord, F Major) is heightened by lowering the A to A-flat and raising the F to F-sharp. This creates the characteristic outward resolution of the augmented sixth interval (A-flat and F-sharp, the exact same two pitches featured in my last post!) to octave G's found in the Dominant harmonies (I64 & V) which complete the Perfect Authentic Cadence.
You may hear the passage above without and with the German Sixth here (in a video from a longer post about Augmented Sixth chords).
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