Them too   

I'll make all kinds of exceptions to my particular brand of 'not getting Haydn', prima inter alia being the piano sonatas! As I think I wrote earlier in this thread, for my money they knock spots off Mozart's.

With such repertoire one cannot speak of definitive recordings. I did find the Kodaly Qt to be rather bland. My Haydn quartet collection is of Lindsays and Mosaiques, who seem to me equally good in their different ways. But others on this board will have plenty of other good suggestions, too!

My brother and I went to the same piano teacher, who gave Haydn sonatas to my brother but not to me. But the volumes were in the house and I would sight-read my way through them in my teens (actually, I think that photo shows me at 8 playing the one in C, Hob. 35).

The first Haydn piece I really went mad about (at 18) was the 'Nelson' Mass (Willcocks), though also at this time the BBC used to broadcast the earlier symphonies at lunchtime and I always found those absorbing.

I'd just like to re-iterate, without contradicting any recommendations, that the Lindsays are fantastic. I lament their retirement from concert life. Their readings of the late Beethoven quartets on ASV are unbelievably good.

Enthusiastically agreed, from a fellow Haydn-not-really-getter.  Maybe this is a common phenomenon?  AC?

The Schornsheim recordings are wonderful, and might account for some of that (plus my background as a diligent piano student).  Although you could play damn near anything on a fortepiano or well-recorded harpsichord (or, he said getting all weak in the knees, clavichord) and get me to praise it to the skies.

Man, do I want to write a piece for clavichord.