Every so often a recording lands that makes me want to lift the lid, sit down and reopen a score I thought I knew well. The latest is a new album of Haydn sonatas from Denis Kozhukhin, released this June on Pentatone, and it has sent me back to my own Haydn with fresh ears.
A pianist revisiting old ground
What makes this release quietly fascinating is that it is not Kozhukhin's first word on this composer. As The Classic Review notes, Returning to a composer after ten years of living, touring and growing is one of the more honest things a musician can do, and you can hear the accumulated thought in every phrase.
The new disc gathers five sonatas, opening with the early D major, Hob. XVI:4, and reaching toward the darker, more searching C minor, Hob. XVI:20. The label frames the album as a journey across Haydn's range, noting that
What the critics are hearing
The early reviews single out Kozhukhin's clarity and character. In a paired assessment alongside Peter Donohoe's ongoing Haydn cycle, The Classic Review observed that in Kozhukhin's playing That is exactly the kind of detail that separates a polite Haydn from a living one.
The reviewer also praised the way Kozhukhin shapes the emotional turns. Haydn rewards this approach. His sudden silences, his jokes that land a beat late, his minor-key shadows that pass like weather all depend on a player willing to follow the music's mood second by second.
A career built on range
Kozhukhin is no specialist who lives in one corner of the repertoire. As Pentatone notes, he is and he has built a discography that travels from Haydn to Brahms, Prokofiev, Ravel and Gershwin. Coming back to the Classical sonata after all that is a little like a long-distance walker returning to a familiar hill: the path is the same, but the view has changed.
Why Haydn still matters at the keyboard
For pianists, Haydn is a teacher disguised as entertainment. His sonatas demand exactly the discipline that serves everything else we play: clean articulation, honest voicing, and the courage to let a rest breathe. A recording like this is a reminder that the so-called smaller works are often where an artist's musicianship is most exposed.
It is music I love to bring into my own recital programmes, where a Haydn sonata can set the air for the Romantic or contemporary works that follow. If you enjoy hearing this repertoire shaped with care and colour, I would warmly invite you to explore my upcoming concerts and recital dates, or to get in touch about a performance, at yinghopiano.com.
For now, I would simply put the Kozhukhin album on, sit with the C minor sonata, and let Haydn do what he has always done best: surprise you when you least expect it.
