Britain's Glory

Cornelia Horak traces Joseph Haydn's years of travel in England in search of the dawn of Classical-era song. Together with Richard Fuller on fortepiano, an acknowledged expert in this era, the internationally renowned Austrian soprano applies her talents to the "original canzonettas" that the composer wrote in the mid-1790s, most of them on texts by his British friend Anne Hunter. They represent an elaborate further development of the German-language songs Haydn had written up to that point and form one of the starting points for the immediately proceeding flights of fancy in this genre.