After the great success of his recordings of Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky and Medtner Piano Concertos, Yevgeny Sudbin now presents a disc of solo works by Haydn. As Sudbin writes in his liner notes, one of the qualities in this composer which he finds particularly endearing is Haydn’s ‘delight in silliness, outrageous wit and the breaking of all conventions’. The works chosen for this recital are by no means mere light-weight ‘musical jokes’, however; for instance they include the profoundly beautiful Andante con variazioni in F minor, which some have suggested was written in response to the death of Mozart In an affectionate tribute to the composer, Sudbin ends his recital with Larking with Haydn, his own tongue-in-cheek arrangement of the Finale of the Lark Quartet.

The release in 2005 of Yevgeny Sudbin’s first disc, a selection of Scarlatti sonatas, caused a sensation. A number of reviewers compared it favourably to the legendary recordings by Horowitz in the same repertoire, and on the BBC Radio 3 CD Review, the result was described as follows: ‘It's as if he's dragged Scarlatti off a dusty museum shelf and brought him out into the sunshine where both he and the music are happily basking.’