Haydn champion

I am glad to read that Paul Lewis is ‘on a mission to reveal the great composer’s hidden depths’ by playing and recording Haydn piano sonatas (March). My late husband, the pianist and composer John Mccabe, would be delighted. He was on a similar mission all his life, and fought continually to bring this wonderful set of keyboard works back to public notice. He played Haydn piano sonatas and his other solo keyboard works throughout his career, regularly playing 29 of them in public and, between 1963 and 2010, giving more than 380 performances of them. He also recorded all the sonatas for Decca and was, to the best of my knowledge, the first ever to do so. This was between 1974-77, and was part of the great resurgence of interest in Haydn at this time. They have been on sale ever since (apart from a short hiatus between the availability of the

LP sets and the reissue on CD box set) over a period of more than 40 years. I believe it was as a result of my husband’s advocacy that some of the ‘great pianists’ you mention decided to explore the Haydn solo keyboard repertoire, and I hope you will find room to publish this letter in the interests of historical accuracy. Monica Mccabe, via email