‘The style is part of the means.’ So declared Derek Solomons in Gramophone in April 1981, discussing with Andrew Keener the approach taken on the first volume of his recordings of Haydn’s ‘Morzin’ Symphonies, recently issued as a three-LP set. It may not have seemed so at the time, but this set and its follow-up (2/82) were the opening salvo in a quiet revolution in the performance of Haydn’s symphonies. Period-instrument groups existed on the fringes of the mainstream in the early 1980s but the most prominent among them, the Academy of Ancient Music, was only just embarking upon its first foray into Classical repertoire with its Mozart symphony cycle. The revolution was on the verge of becoming turbo-charged with the launch of compact disc a few years hence but, in 1980, playing Haydn with minimal forces on gut-strung and valveless instruments was a brave move.

Solomons’s ensemble, L’Estro Armonico, began life in 1973 and concerned itself initially with core Baroque repertoire as the performing arm of the Vivaldi Society. ‘I’d already fixed up my Amati with gut strings and got hold of an early type of bow,’ recalled Solomons. ‘Then soon afterwards, when we were invited to the 1978 Bath Festival, I had everyone put on gut strings and use these bows – not without some protest, I may say!’ A couple of years later the ensemble installed itself in St Barnabas’s Church, Woodside Park (the hum of the traffic on the Finchley High Road is occasionally audible), and over the next six years recorded no fewer than 49 Haydn symphonies and an overture, many of them for the first time on period instruments.

The ‘Morzin’ Symphonies appeared on the Saga label but by the following year the project had transferred to CBS Masterworks, first with a series of Sturm und Drang symphonies, then encroaching gradually upon the works of the late 1770s and early 1780s. The later CBS recordings appeared on CD but have long been unavailable, while the Saga recordings have never been transferred from LP until now. In addition, five further symphonies remained unissued from sessions in 1986 and emerge for the first time here, newly remastered.

In his 1982 review Robin Golding greeted the ‘Morzin’ Symphonies enthusiastically, finding the performances ‘neat, lively and rhythmic … very successful on the whole, in the quick movements.’ Symphony No 1 must have seemed sinewy and athletic played by this group founded on just six violins, a viola, cello and bass, even if to 21st-century ears the tempo is a notch down from new generations of Haydn specialists, who drive it harder still. RG was less convinced by slow movements, which he found short-breathed, with ‘the vibrato-less bulges in the string-playing soon [becoming] wearisome’. Still, the style flows from the means, and more than four decades on listeners are more accustomed to such idiosyncrasies of ancient instruments and rediscovered performing approaches: there’s a warmth to the adagios of, say, Nos 44 and 47 that evades certain other ensembles in this music.

RG also remarked upon ‘some spectacular high horn-playing’, and one of the advantages of a slimmed-down string section (augmented to 4.4.3.1.1 for the later symphonies) is the prominence it gives not only to the virtuoso parts with which Haydn often confronts his horns but also to his characteristic writing for woodwind – primarily oboes but also often one or two flutes and sometimes chuckling obbligato bassoons, as in the finale of Symphony No 68. Go straight to the Maria Theresia Symphony (No 48) to hear Anthony Halstead et al whooping joyously in the stratospheric upper reaches of the horn’s range (and do seek out Halstead’s online blog, in which he reminisces about recording another horn symphony, No 51, for a range of ensembles).

Symphony No 39 features a pneumatic quartet of horns but comes over perhaps without the force and fierceness of later recordings, although among other archetypal Sturm und Drang symphonies, the second-movement Allegro di molto of La Passione (No 49) or the finale of the Trauer (No 44) seethe with due fury. There’s plenty of anger, too, along with louring horns, in the opening movement of the Farewell Symphony (No 45), even if intonation is occasionally pushed a little far in places. And Solomons and his players were far from the first or last to find the negotiation of B major on period instruments perhaps a challenge too far in Symphony No 46. In more expansive works such as No 42 in D major, though, L’Estro Armonico are finely attuned to the lyricism that was by the 1770s becoming a more prominent feature of Haydn’s style, where other groups focus more on the nervy energy of the writing.

Reading down the list of players involved over the six years of the project, one is struck by the names who were soon to become leading lights in what was then still called the authentic movement – Beznosiuk, Goodman, Hirons, Huggett, Skeaping, Wallfisch and many others. The sense of adventure and discovery remains palpable in so many of the recordings here, and despite the occasional misfire, nearly all of these performances stand up well to comparison with a number of period-instrument recordings that succeeded them. I’ve long wished for them to be made available again, and it’s a pleasure to see them repackaged with such care.