Tuning comparison: Haydn Symphony 103, 1st movement

In the following you can compare the tuning quality of different orchestra recordings by a very subtle passage of  Haydn’s Symphony 103, 1st movement.  

After a bass solo line the wind instrument players have to start their first entry with the dominant seventh chord F-A-C-Eb, followed by the tonica major chord Bb-D-F.

The quality of the intonation behaviour, this means the approach to just intonation is very different. You will find examples of high quality (e.g. Schwarz, Gielen and Norrington-studio) and others with very poor tuning behaviour, more or less moving along the line of equal temperament, e.g. Beecham, Norrington-live.

For an objective comparing we have added clips of virtual music, created with samples of the Vienna Symphonic Library. The names of these examples begin with “Haydn_103-1”, the ending means:

• Haydn_103-1_Virtual-VSL-TMP = poor equal temperament
• Haydn_103-1_Virtual-VSL-HMT-TF(100) = automatically full correction by Hermode Tuning to thirds and fifths according to just intonation
• Haydn_103-1_Virtual-VSL-HMT-TF(70) = the same, but slightly reduced correction
• Haydn_103-1_Virtual-VSL-HMT-TFN(100) = tunes additionally the seventh of the dominant chord to a “natural seventh”

Real Orchestras