Haydn's Creation: Today (Sunday): 2.00pm

[doversoul1]

In this performance, sung in German and recorded last Wednesday at the Royal Festival Hall, the period instruments of the OAE and the freshly minted voices of Schola Cantorum of Oxford promise to reveal the work in all its teaming humanity.
Presented by Martin Handley

Sophie Bevan (soprano)
Andrew Kennedy (tenor)
Andrew Foster-Williams (bass)
Schola Cantorum of Oxford
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Adam Fischer (conductor).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pyfr1

[Flosshilde]

Oh B - saw it in the schedule & then forgot

[BBMmk2]

I didnt know at all!! Watched The Bucket List!! Bah! If I had known!! Ah iplayer!!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I missed it, too! Did anybody hear it? Looks very worth a listen!

[aeolium]

I heard it, and I thought it was an excellent performance, with well-judged tempi, not too heavy yet with a grandeur where appropriate. Fischer brought out the detail in the wonderful writing for wind and the chorus was superb. I actually prefer the German version, simply because it seems a better language to sing in (and was more natural for van Swieten to write in). This is surely one of Haydn's greatest works, perhaps the last expression of Enlightenment optimism.

As an aside, I have sometimes wondered whether the dark D minor recitative/aria "Seid fruchtbar alle/Mehret euch" was in part a sombre reflection by Haydn on his own childlessness (though in one sense he had many "children") as it seems so unusually sepulchral - or is it rather a presentiment of the fall from paradise?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I heard it, and I thought it was an excellent performance, with well-judged tempi, not too heavy yet with a grandeur where appropriate. Fischer brought out the detail in the wonderful writing for wind and the chorus was superb. I actually prefer the German version, simply because it seems a better language to sing in (and was more natural for van Swieten to write in). This is surely one of Haydn's greatest works, perhaps the last expression of Enlightenment optimism.

Thank you, aeolie; definitely one to "catch up" with - I agree with you in every particular about the work itself.