Haydn Die Schöpfung

My interest and fascination for the work of Joseph Haydn date back to 1960-64, when I was completing my music and cello studies at the Barcelona Conservatoire and had the opportunity to discover and study some of the composer’s most beautiful quartets. During that time, two special pocket scores always accompanied in my apprenticeship of musical forms and the fascinating discovery of great masterpieces of musical creation: one was J. S. Bach’s The Art of Fugue and the other Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross. Two wonderful works that I later recorded under the ASTRÉE label a few years after having founded and prepared the appropriate music ensembles: L’Art de la Fugue, recorded in March, 1986, with 4 solo wind instruments and 4 violas da gamba from the ensemble HESPÈRION XX, following a year of concerts throughout Europe to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Bach’s birth. It was followed four years later, in December, 1990, by the recording of Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, two years after the creation of the orchestra LE CONCERT DES NATIONS.

Let there be light! To open the new concert season, the Tonkunstler Orchestra and their Music Director Yutaka Sado are joined by the RIAS Chamber Choir and three excellent vocal soloists to tackle nothing less than «The Creation» itself. Premiered in 1798 in the Stadtpalais Schwarzenberg, which then stood on the Neue Markt square in Vienna, this German-language oratorio by Joseph Haydn takes the Book of Genesis as its subject matter. In the solo parts, archangels describe and comment on the six days of the Creation, with Adam and Eve also having their say. Meanwhile, the orchestra makes a painting in sound of the primordial chaos, the first sunrise and the appearance of creatures on earth.

Jordi Savall leads La Capella Reial de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations in Haydn's The Creation. The composer confessed that while composing he had "felt an extraordinary religious fervor." However, this work was also inspired by the spirituality of the Viennese Masonic lodges of his day. It is above all the first secular oratorio, in the sense that its message is addressed to all mankind, exactly like The Magic Flute, in operati.

The Munich Philharmonic (German: Münchner Philharmoniker) is a German symphony orchestra located in the city of Munich. It is one of Munich's four principal orchestras, along with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Radio Orchestra and the Bavarian State Orchestra.

When this recording was released in 2021, conductor Zubin Mehta was 85; it was made over three days in 2019. There isn't an absolutely compelling novelty contained here, and this is very much an old-school Haydn performance with a full symphony orchestra and chorus (not that you'd want anything less in this work, whose rock-concert atmosphere at the initial performance is well described in the booklet).

Let there be light! To open the new concert season, the Tonkunstler Orchestra and their Music Director Yutaka Sado are joined by the RIAS Chamber Choir and three excellent vocal soloists to tackle nothing less than «The Creation» itself. Premiered in 1798 in the Stadtpalais Schwarzenberg, which then stood on the Neue Markt square in Vienna, this German-language oratorio by Joseph Haydn takes the Book of Genesis as its subject matter. In the solo parts, archangels describe and comment on the six days of the Creation, with Adam and Eve also having their say. Meanwhile, the orchestra makes a painting in sound of the primordial chaos, the first sunrise and the appearance of creatures on earth.

The present recording is taken from a live transmission of the Academy concert of May 8, 1972, from the Nationaltheater in Munich. The early death of Karl Richter in February 1981 frustrated the intention of releasing one of the great oratorios from his performing repertoire, Joseph Haydn’s “The Creation”, in a studio recording. Happily it has proved possible to obtain the present sound recording from the archives of the Bayerische Staatsoper and, with the kind consent of the participants, to prepare a technically enhanced release.

The orchestra began its performing activity on 1 September 1967 as Symphonisches Orchester Berlin, under the auspices of the Berliner Orchestervereinigung e.V., after the merger of two independent orchestras, the Berliner Symphonisches Orchester and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester. Carl August Bünte, who had been chief conductor of the Berliner Symphonisches Orchester, was the first chief conductor of the newly formed ensemble, and held the position until 1973. From 1967 to 1990, the orchestra performed as the Symphonisches Orchester Berlin. In 1990, the orchestra was renamed the Berliner Symphoniker.