Haydn: (Die) Schöpfung

Introduction:

There is nothing to beat the thrill of a top quality live concert. Once in a while an audience will get drawn into the music, creating an unbeatable emotionally meaningful experience. It doesn't happen often, even with the best combination of artists, one can still fail to press that "X Factor" button that provides everything needed for something special. It happens even less frequently in the recording studio, ...
...produce a performance which captures that special thrill - you know that you've got a special event in your hands. One of the things I really enjoy doing is persuading people to try music they might not otherwise have explored and when it comes to Joseph Haydn - this is the recording which makes me jump around my friends and acquaintances with the over-excited exuberance of a puppy that has treed its first cat!

Background:
... more

Introduction:

There is nothing to beat the thrill of a top quality live concert. Once in a while an audience will get drawn into the music, creating an unbeatable emotionally meaningful experience. It doesn't happen often, even with the best combination of artists, one can still fail to press that "X Factor" button that provides everything needed for something special. It happens even less frequently in the recording studio, and so when both the concert AND the resulting CD produce a performance which captures that special thrill - you know that you've got a special event in your hands. One of the things I really enjoy doing is persuading people to try music they might not otherwise have explored and when it comes to Joseph Haydn - this is the recording which makes me jump around my friends and acquaintances with the over-excited exuberance of a puppy that has treed its first cat!

Background:

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) enjoyed a prolific and highly successful career composing in a wide variety of genres from opera to piano sonatas and is widely regarded to have fine-tuned the Classical Style in his string quartets and symphonies. When Haydn started composing "Die Schoepfung" (The Creation in English) in 1786 he had returned to Vienna after a highly successful time in England where his music was feted by everyone from the King downwards. He was now at the height of his powers, with a doctorate from Oxford University in his pocket and was certainly very aware of the commercial value of his music having made a substantial amount of money in England.

From the copious archived documentation, we can read that Haydn felt there was nothing more he could say in the symphonic form (he had, after all written 104 symphonies) so with an eye to the huge popularity of Handel's oratorios, he decided that was the way forward for his next major work. Haydn chose a libretto (words for the music) he'd been given in London which was based on words from the Old Testament relating to the Creation as well as parts of Milton's "Paradise Lost" - it was translated to German by Gottfried von Swieten for Haydn, who lost no time in composing the three part work - which covers the creation ot the Earth through to that of Adam and Eve.

Haydn was a canny old chap when it came to money - unlike his financially feckless friend Mozart - and so the first performances of the work were private concerts, for those aristocrats who had underwritten the composition and performance costs. Haydn earned something like £10000 in total and there were near riots as people tried to gatecrash the concert hall at the premiere on 30th April 1798. The success was immediate. In only a few years the piece had been performed all around Europe and continues to be a sure-fire hit to this day.

The Artists:

This recording is performed in what we call "HIPP" style - i.e. historically informed performance practice - as near as one can be to what Haydn would have heard back in 1798. The orchestra is the crack Canadian group Tafelmusik who all play on original or copies of instruments from the 17th/18th century. It makes a huge difference to the sound - the bite of gut strings and minimal vibrato in the string sections, a much mellower french horn tone, a trombone section which actually balances in the orchestra rather than blasting everything into submission, the unique and unmistakeable sound of an original double-bassoon and the intensity of wooden sticks on a cowhide covered timpani. Haydn's Creation requires a large orchestra and using modern instruments often leads to a muddy, unclear sound in combination with a chorus - but Tafelmusik and the HIPP route provides an aural revelation similar to cleaning 200 years grime off a Rembrandt.

The conductor is Bruno Weil, an expert in this repertoire and the soloists soprano Ann Monoyios (who sings the angel Gabriel and Eve,) tenor Joerg Hering (Uriel) and bass Harry van der Kamp (Raphael and Adam) all have focussed yet expressive voices with carefully controlled/limited vibrato perfect for this interpretation. However, the master stroke of this recording is the participation of the Toelzerknabenchor - or Toelz Boys' Choir from Bavaria in Germany. If one is accustomed to the sound of an English boys' cathedral choir, then the sound of the Toelzerknabenchor will be a huge surprise. It is far less "angelic" than the Engish style of singing, with much more "bottom" to the sound, from the use of more chest voice rather than head voice. The boys have incredible dynamic control so when they sing quietly, one still hears the quality of the sound. Perhaps the most noticeable aspect is also their perfect intonation and diction, every word is clearly heard, even in complex ensemble passages.

This CD was prepared by concerts at the "Klang und Raum" (Sound and Space) festival in Kloster Irsee in Bavaria - http://www.musikfestival-irsee.de/ and then was recorded in the choir's base of a church in Bad Toelz. I have to admit at this point that I was fortunate enough to attend the rehearsals and concerts at Kloster Irsee, and the electricity generated by artists and music alike was tangible right from the first day. At the concerts - an expensively clad international audience totally forgot they were in a Catholic church and gave not only a standing ovation, but hammered the wooden floors and pews of the church in deafening appreciation, and after hearing this CD, I defy anyone not to feel the same way!

Performance:

Where to start? What makes this recording so special?
The musicians used a new performing edition of this work, which removed errors and inexact performance instructions, so in combination with the authentic instruments, one is really getting back to what Haydn would have heard. Right from the start - the depiction of Chaos - there is so much detail to hear in the music - the revolutionary for the time unfinished musical phrases and dissonance have a clarity which really emphasises the "emptiness" Haydn wanted to picture. When Mr van der Kamp sings his first phrase and comes to the words "...ohne Form und leer" (without form and empty) - the desolation and emptiness of his voice are absolutely spine-chillingly effective, so the ensuing triumphant fortissimo outburst of the chorus on the famous Licht/light of "Es ward Licht/It will be light!" is all the more stunning.

The performance is full of these stunning little touches which bring the music to life. Tempi are on the fast side at times, yet that only serves to provide momentum and sustain constant attention from the listener. With HIPP you don't lose accuracy and clarity when playing fast, so the risk is worth taking and in fact I feel it makes everything even more exciting and this is expecially the case during some of the choruses - e.g. "Stimmt an die Saiten ergreift die Leier/Seize the lyre and let its strings resound" where you can really feel the G-forces as the tempo takes off! yet at the same time the more pastoral music is carved with great delicacy, such as in Ann Monoyios's delightfully sung aria describing the creation of birds.

Haydn writes vividly to describe the creation of weather and animals and this certainly is echoed by the performers whether it is the prancing tiger or the gently floating snow-flakes! It is all incredibly vivid and without exception beautifully played and sung.

It is always hard to write about music, especially when one is a musician and just wants to play it in order to communicate it to an audience! But there are two small sections which really show the quality of this recording:

One comes when bass Harry van der Kamp sings the words (I'll just quote the English here...) "Thy turnest thy face away, all things tremble and grow cold. Thou takest away the breath of life; they crumble into dust" He changes the tone of his voice completely, no vibrato, hardly even any sound, almost lifeless - as the orchestra strings play an incredibly quiet heartbeat de-duh rhythm in the background which fades away to nothing on his last word of "Staub/dust" - again it is a totally heart-breaking moment which brings Haydn's music to such vivid and moving life - or death in this instance...

The other special moment is in the last part of the work, where the clarity of HIPP instruments serves to heighten the change in Haydn's writing when the Creation story moves from the creating of life to the development of Adam and Eve. Haydn moves the key of the music from a warm Bflat major to a much brighter E major and the music becomes much more sensual and rambunctious for want of a better word as Adam and Eve get to know one another. The rollicking horns as they sing about the "freshness of the ripe fruit" make the underlying meanings perfectly clear and the joyful singing of Ann Monoyios and Harry van der Kamp leaves nothing to the imaginationl Finally, before the last triumphant chorus - Joerg Hering brings a wonderful warning tone to his singing (so many tenors just sing as if they don't know what the words mean that they are singing) as he sings the famous last words of Uriel: "O happy pair, happy for evermore if vain delusion lead you not astray to want more than you have and know more than you should..." Watch out for that snake and these apples...!

There's a lot more which I could pick up on with this recording, but it would make this review way too long. Suffice it to say that the accompanying booklet has a fascinating and revealing essay by the world renowned Haydn expert H.C. Robbins Landon, as well as a full translation of the German libretto to follow along with the recording (well worth doing to get the most out of this amazing music.) My one complaint is that - at least in the original edition that I have - there are no biographies of the artists which is a shame. However, there is an interesting list of the instruments played by the orchestra where one can see for example that the clarinets and bassoons are originals from 1780-1800. The recording quality is excellent as one would expect from top Sony producer Wolf Erichson, with just enough resonance from the church acoustic to give the piece real acoustic atmosphere without compromising the vital elements of instrumental and vocal clarity. The work is sensibly split over 2 CDs.

This recording has won numerous awards including: "The Collector's Choice" in Classic CD, 1994.

This is one of these recordings everyone should have in their collection... and if you are unfamiliar with Haydn, you can't start with a better CD to get to know him. However, due to the seismic events in the record industry, the specialised Sony label - Vivarte - on which this CD originally was released, was discontinued and subsequently Sony's classical department went into a meltdown of apocalyptic proportions before being merged with BMG. As a result it can be hard to find Vivarte recordings, though Amazon did have this for £25 last time I looked. It is worth hunting down!

A must buy recording! 

...less