For her first solo outing on Glossa, entitled Haydn and the harp, Chiara Granata presents a gorgeous demonstration, full of elegance and refinement, of the importance of the harp in the Classical era – and of Franz Joseph Haydn’s significant contribution to its development. Granata’s selection demonstrates how composers strove to get the most out of the harp by pushing for experimental technical demands without forcing its sound or calling for unnatural tempi; this was often with Haydn being involved in providing advice to composers and performers alike.

As further witnesses of Haydn’s penchant for the harp Chiara Granata includes in her programme a selection of folk melodies from the British Isles arranged by the composer, then (in Stendhal’s words) “full of glory and year”. Here she is joined by countertenor Raffaele Pe, violinist Anaïs Chen and cellist Marco Ceccato. Other composers utilized Haydn’s compositions as inspiration for their own, as can be heard in Nicolas-Charles Bochsa’s Petite Mosaique sur La Creation d’Haydn or even made arrangements of his symphonies, such as was the case with Louis-Charles Ragué.

Chiara Granata (a pupil of that treasured Glossa artist, Mara Galassi) plays two instruments built at the time of the compositions making up this delightful programme: a Holtzman harpe à crochet and a single-action harp by Naderman, the latter employed for the solo tour de force that is Boscha’s Petite Mosaique.