BEIRUT: “This program might seem a little mixed up,” said maestro Robert Lehr­baumer, standing on the conductor’s podium at St. Joseph’s Church near Monnot, the Lebanese National Symphony Orchestra (LNSO) arrayed behind him. “There are no full symphonies, just parts of different pieces. This gives some impression of the way people performed in the time of Handel, Mozart and Beethoven. We’re going back to the roots.” 

It’s always surprising to hear that earlier generations had even more of an attention deficit than our own but, as Lehrbaumer reminded his audience on Friday evening, composers of the classical period didn’t expect their symphonies and sonatas to be performed as a whole. 

In order to keep the attention of their listeners, classical orchestras would perform isolated movements or extracts. Only with the accession of the Romantic movement did the norm of performing full works become established. 

St. Joseph’s Church plays host to orchestral concerts on a weekly basis, but Friday night’s performance was a special occasion. 2009 is the bicentenary of the death of the great composer Joseph Haydn. Austrian Ambassador Eva Maria Ziegler invited the prolific conductor Lehr­baumer to lead the LNSO through a tributary concert. 

“We will meet very different kinds of Joseph Haydns,” continued Lehrbaumer at his podium. “We see his dramatic side in the Farewell Symphony, but he was also the master of surprises, and even humor.” 

In addition to showcasing the many faces of Haydn, the program gave a flavor of how the composer’s innovations had filtered down to subsequent tunesmiths: The “Variations on a Theme by Haydn” from Jo­hannes Brahms were performed, as well as pieces from Franz Schmidt and Peter Planyavsky. 

Audiences were plunged into the action with the first movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 45, otherwise known as the “Farewell” symphony. Vigorous, swooping violin chords are set against serene cooing from the woodwind section, the LNSO playing with admirable luster under Lehrbaumer’s energetic direction. 

Written for his aristocratic patron Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy, the Farewell symphony highlights Haydn’s musical humor. The Esterhazy family, which employed Haydn for most of his career, spent the winter at their ancestral seat in the Austrian town of Eisenstadt, upping sticks in the summer to the palace of Esterhaza in rural Hungary. 

Members of the court orchestra had to leave their wives and families in the winter quarters. By the end of the summer of 1772, the instrumentalists were anxious to return home. Haydn’s Farewell symphony was written as a heavy hint to his patron. In the final movement, musicians begin dribbling from the stage, leaving only two violinists to wrap up proceedings. 

Esterhazy got the message: The court decamped back to Eisenstadt the very next day. 

Lehrbaumer ended the first half of Friday’s concert with this witty finale. At first, musicians left one by one. Then entire sections departed the stage: The whole cello section, for example, shuffled into the wings. With all the chairs and music stands crowding the stage, this was something of a logistical challenge, but the musicians managed to reenact the finale without causing too much kerfuffle. 

Also on the program was Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 in G Major, the “Surprise” symphony. The nickname comes from a crashing chord that ruptures a serene segment of the second movement, comically smashing the calm. This attention-grabbing symphony was written for the first of Haydn’s hugely popular seasons in London in 1791. 

The surprises on Saturday didn’t all come from Haydn, however. Mid-way through the concert’s first half, Ziegler mounted the podium. Citing fruitful musical collaborations between the Austrian embassy and the LNSO – with a particular reference to the New Year’s Eve concerts held annually in Beirut and conducted by Lehrbaumer – Ziegler expressed her thanks to Walid Gholmieh, the orchestra’s founder, chief and principal conductor. 

Summoning Gholmieh, Ziegler announced him as a recipient of the Decoration of Honor in Gold for services to the Republic of Austria. As audience members gasped, Ziegler punctured Gholmieh’s lapel with the gold pin. 

The rollercoaster evening was only intensified when Lehrbaumer swapped his conductor’s baton for the keyboard of a grand piano, playing the unbearably poignant Variations in F Minor, thought to have been written in response to the death of Haydn’s great friend Marianne von Genzinger. 

This was swiftly followed by the rollicking, thrumming edifice of Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D Major, based on Hungarian folk tunes. Lehrbaumer’s speedy, high-pitched piano part skipped lithely alongside the orchestral accompaniment, to immensely energizing effect. 

The second half of Saturday’s concert tracked Haydn’s influence throughout the ensuing centuries. The opening symphony gave joke-loving Haydn a run for his money. Written by Planyavsky, the “Arrival” symphony is a direct mirror image of Haydn’s “Farewell.” The piece begins with a lone bassoonist onstage. Other players stroll on at intervals, tuning their instruments and creating an unlikely melody. The movement ends with a tuba-player barging through with his oversize instrument, letting out a delayed “parp” that set Saturday’s audience chuckling. 

The intermezzo of Schmidt’s opera “Notre Dame” was next, a vast, shimmering, emotive work that plays on Hungarian themes in a very different way to Haydn’s concerto. 

The concert was brought to a close with Brahms’ melancholic “Variations,” a fitting tribute to a composer who, as Lehr­baumer and the LNSO reminded us, was as diverse as he was groundbreaking.