The Hoffmann concerto was long assumed to be the work of Joseph Haydn, a myth which the front cover of the booklet seems happy to perpetuate. That it remains relatively popular on disc – five other versions feature in the current catalogue – can only be a comment on the serious lack of worthwhile flute concertos. The line between rococo charm and sheer tedium is a thin one, and I’m in no doubt which side of it Hofmann’s amiable platitudes belong. Michael Haydn’s concerto of c1770, though no masterpiece, is altogether more shapely and more memorable in its ideas, especially the gracious, amoroso Andante – very much in the vein of Mozart’s teenage serenades – and the gamesome finale. While his interpretative powers are hardly stretched by either concerto, Emmanuel Pahud, Principal Flute of the Berlin Philharmonic, gives performances it would be hard to better, with his sweet, gleaming tone, pointed articulation and intensely musical phrasing. The Berlin Haydn-Ensemble, a diminutive offshoot of the BPO, lend spirited and polished support.
Joseph Haydn’s six Scherzandi, probably composed for the Esterhazy band in the early 1760s, are in effect miniature four-movement symphonies. Their first movements, sometimes hinting at sonata form, and tiny 6/8 finales exude all the young Haydn’s confidence and irrepressible high spirits: and the abrupt contrasts of registers and dynamics in the finale of No. 6 in A are an early instance of the ‘comic fooling’ that so repelled sober-minded North German critics. Most of the slow movements are pleasantly melancholy serenades in the tonic minor (though that in No. 5 suggests a graver tone); and each of the minuets introduces a flute solo in its trio. In these first-rate performances, attractively recorded in a spacious church acoustic, the Scherzandi certainly make for agreeable late-night listening, though with each work cast in a near-identical pattern I’d suggest you take no more than two or three at a time.'