It's not an experience I seek out, that's for sure.

If you know you're going to hate something in advance, it's not hard to find examples of things you hate – deals neatly with that pesky hermeneutic circle. I'm more than capable of doing so myself; I have my prejudices. Your reservations I can well understand!

Hurwitz is worth paying attention to on certain topics (his enthusiasm for Haydn is well-informed), but I generally feel he writes his review before listening to the record, or might as well. Some critics like to practise blind listening; his approach I'd describe as blinkered listening.

Just listening to the 7th now, having read your post earlier, and I have to say it still holds up pretty decently!

The orchestrations often centre on a love duet between oboe and clarinet, the canonic principle played out between single reed and double reed. I have an instinctive conviction that one is Robert, the other Clara.

Dugga doo?

I'll be listening!

"Can that be sung?"
Nope.
"Write it like that anyway?"
Yep.

I can't pass up this opportunity to post a link to Wilhelm Stenhammar's String Quartet no. 5, a piece that surely has Haydnpockets. The Fresk Quartet are the players.
youtu.be/eRJEUYG3r9Y?...

Non credo.

I guess I'll be ripped in half and the German Jewish side of me will be sent in that direction – not strictly "to live" in that scenario.

Reminds me of when we got our kitchen done... At least Chloe got a new cardboard box out of it. Otherwise the whole process was incomprehensible.

Is there an alternate fingering that makes that F# A# easy at speed? Using one of the side keys? I'd have to dig my clarinet out to remember the details.

You're not going to find one in the inside pocket of a dinner jacket, are you? I've been known to take one off at a later stage of an evening when I want to look vaguely louche, and find it there several months later.

Extraordinary!