LSO/Christophers - Haydn, 3 March 2022

Barbican Hall

The Creation (sung in English)

Lucy Crowe (soprano)

Andrew Staples (tenor)

Roderick Williams (baritone)

London Symphony Chorus (chorus director: Simon Halsey)

London Symphony Orchestra

Harry Christophers (conductor)

Forty years ago to the day, the Barbican Centre opened its doors to the concert-, theatre-, and exhibition-going public. The London Symphony Orchestra and its Music Director Claudio Abbado offered the Overture to Die Meistersinger, Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto (soloist: Vladimir Ashkenazy), Elgar’s Cello Concerto (soloist: Yo-Yo Ma), and Ravel’s La Valse. The current LSO Music Director, Sir Simon Rattle, had chosen his longstanding favourite—and mine—Haydn’s oratorio, The Creation, for this celebratory concert, but alas the aftermath of surgery meant that he ceded his place at a late stage to Harry Christophers. I say ‘alas’ for Rattle’s sake, since he would doubtless have loved to be there, but Christophers directed a collegial, eminently musical account of this most life-affirming of works, dedicated by the orchestra to the people of Ukraine. It will surely have lifted many spirits, at least in London, at so dark and terrifying a time. 

The public premiere of The Creation boasted on orchestra of 120, though a chorus of only 60. Here, I think, the numbers were more or less reversed, the chorus somewhat more than the number of Haydn’s players, the orchestra not even a handful more than the number of Haydn’s singers. There is no need to get hung up on such things; it was a different occasion, in a different occasion, for different ears, and so on. But it was gratifying at least to have what would once have been a standard Haydn-Mozart string section (12.12.10.7.5), perhaps increased for a large-scale work such as this, rather than something more parsimonious. There was plenty of mystery and potentiality to the ‘Representation of Chaos’, that extraordinary clarinet solo and woodwind writing more generally relished to the full, the pathos of the final descending flute line pointing to ethical and aesthetic imperatives to create. 

The simple, straightforward effectiveness of ‘and there was Light!’, Haydn’s greatest coup de théâtre, was heightened by the committed weight and clarity of the London Symphony Chorus, here as elsewhere on typically excellent form. For if there were times when I missed the sheer variety of scale (with no larger orchestra) the late Sir Colin Davis brought to this work, there were exceptions, especially on the choral side, the choral section ‘And to the ethereal vaults resound’ a little later on a case in point. There was, moreover, a fine edge, rhythmic and harmonic, to the orchestral playing for ‘endless night’ when, a little before, Uriel told of Hell’s spirits’ fate. The combination of orchestra and chorus was throughout excellent, the contrapuntal clarity of ‘The heavens are telling’ at times revelatory. Haydn’s pictorial instrumental imagery was given its delightful due throughout. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly given his experience in such repertoire, Christophers showed himself particularly alert to Haydn’s neo-Handelian turns, for instance in Raphael’s ‘Rolling in foaming billows’. A wonderful brace of oboes (Olivier Stankewicz and Rosie Jenkins) had me think of Bach, though I think that was more coincidence than direct influence. Here and elsewhere, Roderick Williams was a vivid, highly engaging narrator. Lucy Crowe was more inclined to ornament, sometimes further than one might expect, yet always with sound, stylish reason. Her despatch of Haydn’s coloratura, for instance in ‘With verdure clad’, spun from finest Egyptian cotton, was matched by beautifully centred intonation (and indeed by choral agility in ‘Awake the harp, the lyre awake!’) Her aria, ‘On mighty pens uplifted’ was simply outstanding, ‘cooing’ first coy, then ornamented and joined by LSO woodwind in a flourish of birdsong to have Messiaen eat his heart out. Andrew Staples also offered a communicative, sincere performance, very much in the ‘English tenor’ tradition. 

When all three soloists came together, with or without chorus, they complemented each other well—and, crucially, listened to one another and to their fellow musicians, unselfishly moderated by Christophers as conductor. The trio and chorus ‘Most beautiful appear … The Lord is great’ offered a case in point, though I wondered whether its choral close were just a little too bonny and blithe, lacking in the grandeur both Haydn and Handel deserve yet today all too rarely receive. Similarly, the tempo of the ‘Hymn’ in Part Three suggested a brisk jog around the Garden of Eden rather than the anticipated leisurely stroll. Those three flutes, though, who announced Uriel’s preceding accompagnato, made it abundantly clear why no one would ever wish to leave. Williams and Crowe offered an excellent balance between the knowing and the innocent as Adam and Eve.

Hearing the original English of the bilingual libretto by Gottfried van Swieten sometimes brought me, accustomed to hearing the work in German, a few surprises. (I know the English text well, yet I do not think I have ever heard it performed in concert.) Not only were there obvious differences in phrasing, but shifts in practical meaning too, for instance when ‘bespeak’ (Uriel’s aria, no.24) rather than ‘ihm Liebe’ was repeated. There was no denying, though, the sheer goodness of this work, something we need just as strongly as the war-torn Europe for which it was composed. Let us allow Haydn the last word. In 1801, a Bohemian schoolteacher, Charles Ockl, wrote to him, requesting support after unexpected opposition from the Prague consistory to Ockl’s plans to perform The Creation in church. Haydn replied:

… it was with considerable astonishment that I read of the[se] curious happenings, which … considering the age in which we live, reflect but little credit on the intelligence and emotions of those responsible.

The story of the Creation has always been regarded as most sublime, and as one which inspires the utmost awe in mankind. To accompany this great occurrence with suitable music could certainly produce no other effect than to heighten these sacred emotions in the heart of the listener, and to put him in a frame of mind in which he is most susceptible to the kindness and omnipotence of the Creator. – And this exultation of the most sacred emotions is supposed to constitute desecration of a church?

… it is not unlikely that the listeners went away from my Oratorio with their hearts far more uplifted than after hearing … sermons. No church has ever been desecrated by my Creation; on the contrary: the adoration and worship of the Creator, which it inspires, can be more ardently and intimately felt by playing it in such a sacred edifice. 

Perhaps we can say something similar today for the Barbican and other concert halls. In any case, happy fortieth birthday.

 

Haydn's Creation: Chaos and Light

 

The ‘Representation of Chaos’, with which The Creation opens, is justly the most celebrated number in the oratorio, and it is clear from the sketches that Haydn took unprecedented pains over its composition. Heinrich Schenker wrote of Haydn ‘stretching and straining’ his musical means, to recall in its mysteries ‘the mysteries of Chaos’. Without the aid – or constraint – of a text, the composer depicts the universe prior to the Creative act, whilst also prefiguring that act. This movement does not begin in C minor; it opens with an emphatic unison C, of indeterminate length and indeterminate tonality. As Hegel would point out in the second chapter of his Logic, an absolute – that is, a true beginning and basis for all subsequent determinations – cannot in itself be determinate.              

 

From the outset, Haydn evolves his tonality, but he does not immediately introduce a tonic chord of C minor. When the music first seems to be heading that way, he substitutes an interrupted cadence for the expected full close (bars 4-5). The cosmos does not evolve in a few seconds, even in Haydn’s concentrated chronology. As the musical conception develops, so do intimations of life. The very slow, swirling mass of nothingness – ‘the earth was without form and void’ – is breached first by a triplet figure (bar 6), and later by another sign of organized motion in chaos, a double dotted figure. Lawrence Kramer writes: ‘From a scientific standpoint, the … structure effects a heroic reduction of chaos to lawlike, quasi-mathematical regularity.’ Surging dynamic marking evokes the ebb and flow of the first tides, for it is from the oceans that the first life-forms will emerge. This was recognized in contemporary reviews, for example that in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of 21 January 1801: ‘… single notes come forth, spawning others in turn … Movement begins. Powerful masses grate against each other and begin to gestate … Unknown forces, swimming and surging, … bring tidings of order.’ As the Spirit of God moveth upon the waters, the life figurations multiply and subdivide themselves, and the seeds of order are sown, before we return to the void whilst awaiting the first words of this sacred drama. There had been some precedent for this in the germinal introductions to Haydn’s London symphonies – at any rate, all but no.95, which ironically is in C minor – but, harmonically rich though they be, this is an introduction of another magnitude, as befits an introduction preparing the way for the specific musical and verbal drama of Creation.

 

Donald Tovey points out that the ‘Representation of Chaos’ harmonizes well not only with the Biblical account of Creation, but also with the work of Pierre-Simon Laplace and Kant. In his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, disseminated widely since the 1750s, but even more widely during the 1790s, Kant had voiced the traditional Christian doctrine of Creation in space and time (whose validity would be both proven and denied in his subsequent, critical philosophy.)  He had argued that ‘there is a God precisely because Nature can proceed even in Chaos in no other way than regularly and orderly.’ Haydn, Tovey remarks, ‘did a certain amount of dining-out in fin-de-siècle London, [and] was as likely to have heard of the Nebular Hypothesis as a modern diner-out is likely to hear of Einstein and Relativity’.

 

Replica of Herschel's telescope, Bath

This is supported by Haydn’s visit to the astronomer (and amateur composer) Sir William Herschel at his home in Slough on 15 June 1792. There Haydn was able to look through the telescopes of the man who, to all intents and purposes, added nebulae and the Milky Way to the scientific map and was the first man in modern times to discover a planet, Uranus. Unfortunately, Haydn’s notebook tells us very little about what he actually saw, save for the length of ‘the great telescope’, nor of what they said to each other. But a visit to this site of scientific pilgrimage – the King of Poland sent Herschel his portrait, and Catherine the Great requested specifications of his telescopes – would perforce have made a great impression upon Haydn. Science and religion did not stand mutually opposed; indeed, their close relationship is a key feature of Enlightenment theology. Thus Joseph Addison could write, in the early eighteenth century: ‘Natural philosophy quickens this Taste of the Creation, and renders it not only pleasing to the Imagination, but to the Understanding. … It heightens the pleasures of the Eye, and raises such a rational Admiration in the Soul as is little inferior to Devotion.’ Kant likewise emphasized the ‘harmony between my system and religion,’ which heightens his confidence in the veracity of his writings. And Herschel himself, in a rare clue as to his religious sentiments, wrote in a letter of 1794: ‘It is certainly a laudable thing to receive instruction from the great Workmaster of Nature, and for that reason all experimental philosophy is instituted.’          

 

Nevertheless, God’s image has not been explicitly evoked in the ‘Representation of Chaos’. Its closing bars, therefore, mark a return to the mood of the opening, the pathos underlined by the descending flute solo and Neapolitan harmony. In a sense, then, the next section of the introduction renders explicit through words that which has gone before. The double dotted figure is hinted at following Raphael’s ‘In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the earth,’ and is soon stated most clearly (bars 69-71). But the explicit presence of God and His act of Creation make events take a different turn; this is not evolution in an eighteenth-century, let alone a Darwinian sense. Haydn’s outlook stands closer to that of Moses Mendelssohn’s Morning Hours or Lectures on the Existence of God, which we find in the composer’s library. This popular philosophy, derived to some extent from Leibniz’s rationalistic deism, has at its heart the necessity of God’s existence and rejection of Spinoza’s – and Lessing’s alleged – pantheism. An absolute, eternal mind is quite certain, since the testimony of the senses to an external world would be unthinkable without a necessary, extra-worldly being.

 

Portrait by Bernhard Rode, c.1770

A generation earlier, the Swiss æsthetician, Johann Georg Sulzer, had written of the sublime (Erhaben), in his influential Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste:

We are moved as little by the wholly inconceivable as if it never existed. If we are told that God created the world ex nihilo … we experience nothing at all, since this lies totally beyond our comprehension. But when Moses says, ‘And God said: Let there be light; and there was light,’ we are overcome with astonishment because we can at least form some idea of such greatness; we hear to some extent words of command and feel their power.

Though Sulzer’s work was considered dated by some even at the time of publication (first edition, 1771-4), his is a typical view for eighteenth-century readers, writers, and listeners. It illuminates the importance of the word in Haydn’s Creation but also impressed upon us the magnitude of Haydn’s achievement in the ‘Representation of Chaos’. There, despite what many would have thought, he has shown that the apparently ‘inconceivable’ can be conceived and received in the sublime manner. Nevertheless, the sotto voce chanting of the chorus (‘And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters’) engenders a sense of expectation and tension, heightened following the words, ‘and God said: Let there be Light.’ Here, a generation before the choral finale to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, we have impressed upon us the necessity of the word – and the Creator’s primal, enlightening word at that, which confers retrospective meaning and direction upon Haydn’s preceding symphonic chaos.

Thus is the groundwork prepared for Haydn’s greatest coup de théâtre, ‘… and there was Light.’ This conception of courageous simplicity, the famous fortissimo C major chord, is entirely Haydn’s own: he ignored his librettist Gottfried van Swieten’s advice that the darkness should ‘gradually disappear’. It is a passage whose stunning effectiveness has never palled. Of the London première (28 March 1800), Charles Burney observed that ‘the generality of the subscribers were unable to disentangle the studied confusion in delineating chaos.’  Yet ‘the composer’s meaning was felt by the whole audience in this passage; there followed an instant interruption of rapturous applause.’ Haydn’s was a language that could speak across national boundaries. As late as the 1830s, when, as James Webster points out, Haydn’s music was ‘rapidly becoming passé,’ the æsthetician Gustav Schilling would write: ‘there is still no music of greater sublimity than the passage “And there was Light”, … in Haydn’s Creation.’ This entailed connecting ‘the finite and phenomenal … with the infinite and divine’. Such connection is precisely what the act of Creation is.

Light was a symbol that few in Haydn’s first audiences would have fail to recognize at some level; it was not simply or primarily a representation of the sublime, but was above all the quintessential symbol of Enlightenment.  Swieten had written to the Austrian Chancellor Kaunitz in 1774 of the need for ‘light’ in politics; a ‘blind’ people could readily be put to bad use. More generally, he had tirelessly urged the cause for a religious enlightenment of the people, that their faith might be grounded upon rational conviction. Joseph Anton Gall, a colleague of Swieten’s during the 1780s, and subsequently Bishop of Linz, explained that the Redeemer had returned the world to a semi-paradisiacal condition, that is, restored ‘Light’ to the world, since God in His goodness could not bear to leave man in his fallen state. In Leibniz’s Monadology (first published in German in 1720), monads are portrayed as simple, windowless entities, which, through the process of entelechy, strive towards greater and greater brightness until united with the brightest and most enlightened monad, God Himself. However it was interpreted, the symbol of Light was always on the side of the angels so far as men of the Enlightenment – be they Protestant, Catholic, or Deist – were concerned. Light had shone brightly from behind the dark clouds of superstition on the title page of the first major book written by Christian Wolff, Rational Thoughts on God, the World, and the Soul of Man. The Revelatory dazzling brightness of Haydn’s fin-de-siècle primæval Light shines all the more clearly.

(Extracted from 'Haydn's Creation and Enlightenment Theology,' originally published in the Austrian History Yearbook, 39 (2008), 25-44.)

Programme essay for Haydn's Creation: 'A Unique Event'

(This essay was published in the 2014 Salzburg Festival programme for a concert in which Bernard Haitink conducted the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. I reviewed the concert here.)

Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)

Die Schöpfung Hob XXI:2

 

The seeds of Die Schöpfung were sown during Haydn’s visits to England in the early 1790s. Though Haydn was acquainted with a surprisingly large number of Handel’s oratorios through the Sunday morning performances given by his librettist, Gottfried van Swieten, nothing had prepared Haydn for the Handel Festival ‘by command and under the patronage of their Majesties’ held at Westminster Abbey in 1791, which boasted over a thousand performers. Haydn resolved to write a successor work at the first opportunity.

According to a letter from Swieten to the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung:

Now a few words on the poem that you choose to call my Creation. My part in the work, originally written in English, was certainly more than translation; but it was far from being […] my own. […The libretto] is by an unnamed author who had compiled it largely from Milton’s Paradise Lost and had intended it for Handel. What prevented the great man from making use of it is not known, but when Haydn was in London, it was sought out and handed over to him with the request that he set it to music. […] He then showed it to me and […] I recognized immediately that so exalted a subject would allow Haydn the opportunity […] to express the full power of his inexhaustible genius; I therefore encouraged him to take the work in hand and […] I resolved to clothe the English poem in German garb.

The ‘original’ author has never been identified. We can certainly see, however, a fortunate similarity of outlook between mid-18^th-century England and later-century Austria, offering a splendid opportunity, wondrously taken, both to reach summation in and, as war ravaged Europe, to bid farewell to a vision of Enlightenment religion Swieten had long attempted to propagate. That he did as Joseph II’s education minister – his policies often coming into conflict with the Emperor’s more utilitarian concerns – as custodian of the Imperial Library and as librettist for both of Haydn’s late oratorios, this and Die Jahreszeiten (derived also from an English source, James Thomson’s The Seasons).

 

The opening ‘Vorstellung des Chaos’ is justly the most celebrated number in the oratorio, its chromatic extremity approaching Wagner. Sketches render clear Haydn’s unprecedented pains over its composition. ‘Chaos’ does not begin in C minor but with an emphatic unison C: length and tonality indeterminate. Such is the earth ‘without form and void’ from which tonality evolves and which the deed of Creation will change in the twinkling of an eye. As Haydn’s musical conception develops, so do intimations of life. Such was recognized in contemporary reviews, for example that in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung: ‘single notes come forth, spawning others in turn. […] Movement begins. Powerful masses grate against each other and begin to gestate. […] Unknown forces, swimming and surging, […] bring tidings of order.’ As the Spirit of God moves upon the waters, life figurations multiply and subdivide themselves, the seeds of order sown before we return to the void, awaiting the first words of this sacred drama.

           

Soon sotto voce choral chanting of the chorus (‘Und der Geist Gottes schwebte auf der Fläche der Wasser’) engenders a further, crucially verbal sense of expectation and tension. A generation before the choral Finale to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, we have impressed upon us the necessity of the word – and the Creator’s primal, enlightening Word at that. The groundwork is thus prepared for Haydn’s greatest coup de théâtre, ‘Und es ward Licht’ (And there was light). This conception of courageous simplicity, the famous fortissimo C major chord, is entirely Haydn’s own: he ignored Swieten’s advice that the darkness should ‘gradually disappear’. It is a passage whose stunning effectiveness has never palled. Of the London premiere, on 28 March 1800, Charles Burney observed that ‘the generality of the subscribers were unable to disentangle the studied confusion in delineating chaos’. Yet ‘the composer’s meaning was felt by the whole audience in this passage; there followed an instant interruption of rapturous applause’. Light was a symbol that few in Haydn’s first audiences would have failed to recognize at some level; it was not simply a representation of the sublime, but also the quintessential symbol of Enlightenment. Swieten had written in 1774 of the need for ‘light’ in politics; a ‘blind’ people could readily be put to bad use. Haydn edified, enlightened his audience through musical means.

 

Such splendour cedes to radiant A major in the second number, ‘Nun schwanden vor dem heiligen Strahle’. Milton is not completely expelled from this new (or old) heaven, the central section plunging us back into distant, ‘chaotic’ C minor, an abrupt tonal wrench, as Hell’s spirits sink into endless night. Yet unlike Paradise Lost, that is the sole reference made in the work to the fallen angels; the abiding memory is of restitution of unsullied A major: ‘Und eine neue Welt entspringt auf Gottes Wort’ (A new created world springs up at God’s command). Disorder once again yields to fair ‘order’, stressed throughout, as befits a persistent Enlightenment preoccupation. ‘Order is Heav’n’s first law’, Alexander Pope had written in his Essay on Man; here it is firmly, eternally established. Milton returns, but to evoke idyllic nature.

 

Such evocation takes up the bulk of the narrative passages, as opposed to the great, neo-Handelian choruses of praise, prior to the creation of man. The loving care with which Haydn depicts the ‘limpid brook’, the ‘healing plant’, the ‘nightingale’s delightful notes’ and the ‘nimble stag’ possessed definite theological content for his audience. God’s Creation is extolled, just as in ‘natural philosophy’, or what we should call ‘science’. This naive tone painting, at odds with 19^th-century sensibilities – it made Berlioz ‘want to murder somebody’ – is no crowd-pleasing extra; it is an integral part of the composition and its message. Haydn’s audience was to be improved as well as entertained.

           

Without man, though, Creation would remain incomplete. For however heavily the Augustinian tradition might weigh down upon the Church, it had never been able to deny that ‘God created man in his own image’. The scene is thus set for Uriel’s aria, ‘Mit Würd’ und Hoheit angetan’, in which God’s quickening breath and man, the most astounding progeny of that breath, stand as almost equally worthy of praise and wonder. One feature of Haydn’s setting is particularly noteworthy in this context. Instead of returning conventionally from the dominant, G major, as he had done the first time around, Haydn uses the chord at the moment of God’s ‘breath’, as an augmented-sixth pivot to modulate, quite breathtakingly, to the distant key of A flat major. Far from coincidentally, this number is in C major, the key of Light. Having employed this tonality extensively during Part I, it is the first and only example of its use in Part II.

 

Having thus been created, it remains a human duty, indeed the greatest such duty, to praise the Creator. Thus Adam and Eve, having investigated the wonders of Paradise, join with the Heavenly Host in the great hymn, ‘Heil dir, o Gott!’ (Hail, bounteous Lord!). For the final time, Haydn’s long-range tonal plan has elevated the music to the key of Light, having previously taken us as far away as possible, to G flat major, so as to heighten the tonal drama and climax of restoration. Interestingly, this third and final part of the oratorio no longer quotes from the Bible. Indeed the hymn’s conclusion, chanting obeisance ceding to rapturous acclamation, harmonizes remarkably well with various contemporary outlooks. We stand close to the inhabitants of Voltaire’s Eldorado, who ‘have nothing to ask of God’, yet nevertheless ‘thank Him unceasingly’ for everything He has given them and ‘worship God from morning till night’. We stand close to the mystical, Masonic world of Die Zauberflöte. Yet we also stand close to the world of Haydn’s late Te Deum, also in C major. All those worlds and their concerns focus upon praise for the Creator and His Creation.

 

But then the angels take their leave and we are left with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This second half of Part III has often elicited adverse criticism for providing an anti-climax. The somewhat dampened tone is, however, an integral part of the drama. For the listener is immediately plunged back to earth with the only recitativo secco of any length in the entire work. There follows a lengthy duet: charming, yet definitely between mortals. To underline this, the music falls to the key of E flat major. This is the world of commedia dell’arte – as Siegmund Levarie has suggested, the hymn’s action is repeated in parody, the realm of Singspiel. Indeed the opening horn duo of the final Allegro exchange exhibits almost every characteristic of contemporary Viennese popular song. Phrases are symmetrical groupings of four bars, in stark contrast to the hymn’s more complex phrase structure. Horns and fiddling response are rustic. Rhythm is that of the écossaisse. Following a brief recitative, pointing with haste, suggesting near embarrassment at the serpentine temptation that is to come, Haydn concludes with a final chorus of praise in B flat major.

 

But why, in a work whose overarching tonality is that of C major? The central issue here is not, as in Milton, original sin, but man’s distance from God. Man may possess attributes of the divine, yet falls far short. That is made clear in Pope’s Essay, itself most likely an important influence upon the ‘original’ libretto, as well as a celebrated work in later-century Austria. The Heavenly Host has left the scene, the final chorus of praise left to mortals. Soloists are not the previous three archangels, but merely soprano, tenor and bass, joined for the first and last time by an equally anonymous alto. Die Schöpfung ends as it does at least partly so as to emphasize the enduring gulf between human and divine. Such is the lesson of the second Biblical account of man’s creation (Genesis 2:ii–viii): God rested from His works and created man that they might be perpetuated. Yet continue to create though man may, the Creation would remain a unique event. Die Schöpfung remains perhaps its uniquely impressive musical depiction.

 

(To read, and/or to download as a PDF, my essay published in the 2008 Austrian History Yearbook: 'Haydn's "Creation" and Enlightenment Theology, please click here.)



 

Salzburg Festival (1) - BRSO/Haitink - Haydn, The Creation, 18 July 2014

Grosses Festspielhaus

Camilla Tilling (soprano)

Mark Padmore (tenor)

Hanno Müller-Brachmann (bass-baritone)

 

Bavarian Radio Chorus (chorus master: Peter Dijkstra)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

Bernard Haitink has waited until late his career to perform some of the greatest masterpieces of the choral repertoire. The Creation, the B minor Mass, and the St Matthew Passion are all works he has conducted for the first time in or approaching his eighties. ‘Authenticity’ has doubtless played a part here, as has Haitink’s typical modesty. Has the wait been worth it? Very much so, at least on the basis of this, the opening concert of this year’s Salzburg Festival.

 

Since Alexander Pereira added an extra week to the festival, having it open with an ‘Ouverture spirituelle’ programme of sacred music, The Creation, or Die Schöpfung, has featured first each time: a lovely invention of tradition. It would, I am sure, be fascinating to compare Haitink’s performance with those of previous years, not least the ‘period’ performance of Nikolaus Harnoncourt; alas, I am not in a position to do so. We all come with our own personal ‘traditions’, our own terms of reference, however. Passing swiftly over an unfortunate performance earlier this year from Richard Egarr, replacing the late Sir Colin Davis, my most recent performance had been with Sir Colin and the LSO in 2007; beyond that, the recording I tend most often hear in my head – and indeed to listen to – is Karajan’s classic first version (second, if you count his live Salzburg performance, issued much more recently). It seems inconceivable that anyone will ever match, let alone surpass, Karajan’s soloists, but it is a measure of the stature of this performance that Mark Padmore was anything but shamed by inevitable if odious mental comparison with the hardest act to follow, Fritz Wunderlich; indeed, Padmore’s was for me the finest vocal performance of all. And if my memories of the LSO/Davis performance – it has been issued on LSO Live, though I have yet to hear it – in general pip this Salzburg account, perhaps above all in terms of Davis’s inimitable way with orchestral Haydn, encompassing not only great musical wisdom but a sense of fun that is perhaps not Haitink’s strongest suit, then the distinctions will only be of degree. This was a fine performance, with no weak link, which crucially had one marvel anew not only at Haydn’s invention but also at one of the greatest monuments to the late Austrian Enlightenment.  

 

Perhaps one of the greatest surprises concerning Haitink’s performance was the size of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra: the strings ranged from ten first violins to four double basses. (Not that this need determine how we perform the work today, but it is of course a far smaller orchestra than Haydn, influenced by the monumental Handel performances he heard in London, either had in mind or received at the premiere.) There were a few occasions when I really felt that at least another couple of desks of violins would have benefited the performance – for instance, during Raphael’s Second Day accompagnato – but, even in a large house such as this, not very many. In any case, regret at the loss of Karajan’s deep pile was, if not entirely banished, largely compensated for by the alert, variegated playing of the scaled-down BRSO. Purpose and direction may be accomplished and communicated – or not – with any size of orchestra, and they were certainly present from the very opening of the ‘Representation of Chaos’. That first chord – well, not actually a chord, just a unison C, tonality itself still to emerge, like Heaven and Earth themselves – was magnificently ominous; the movement as a whole offered a properly Beethovenian essay in the symphonically generative. Indeed, it almost seemed to go beyond Beethoven. Whether at the fundamental level of harmonic rhythm, or at that of the detail of the menace imparted by clarinet figuration, everything was made to count – and was heard to be connected. (The contrast with the hapless exhibitionism of Egarr could hardly have been greater.)

 

The recitative which follows was taken beautifully slowly: a sense of the desolate, perhaps, or at least the empty, but pregnant with hope. The excellent Bavarian Radio Chorus intoned with sotto voce precision the Spirit of God’s moving upon the waters, before the celebrated outburst of ‘Light!’ It was perhaps not so overpowering as in some performances, yet made its point without exaggeration: typical Haitink. Uriel’s following aria was crisply played, anything but sentimental; Padmore offered – or seemed to do so – a slight stress – upon ‘Ordnung’, that crucial eighteenth-century preoccupation, again without exaggeration, certainly without the musical disruption some seem to think betokens attention to the verbal text. And in the chorus that followed, orchestral chromaticism was both sinuous and strongly symphonically generative, choral diction and pitching beyond reproach. A new created world indeed seemed to spring up at God’s command.

 

Hanno Müller’ Brachmann and Camilla Tilling, the other soloists, both had strong virtues. If Müller-Brachmann had, especially earlier on, a slight tendency to hector and indeed to bluff tone, that soon worked itself out. Tilling announced herself with ‘Mit Staunen sieht das Wunderwerk’, where I cannot help but hear Karajan’s Gundula Janowitz. Tilling was very different indeed: almost hoch-dramatisch, certainly forthright and unquestionably attentive to the libretto. It was intriguing, and perhaps a little surprising, that Haitink seemed keen to highlight Haydn’s Handelian legacy im ‘Rollend im schäumenden Wellen’, not just the dotted rhythms, but their rhythmic and harmonic implications. The Munich flautist worked especial wonders here with the ‘limpid brook’, as did the woodwind section as a whole in the following ‘Nun beut die Flur…,’ Tilling’s line here and elsewhere ornamented. ‘Stimmt an die Saiten’ sounded revealingly close to Mozart’s Handel – Gottfried van Swieten’s performances of alte Musik were of great importance to Mozart and Haydn – and the clarity with which it proceeded enabled both a panoply of orchestral colour as well as choral vigour. The fourth day’s sunrise again made its point without exaggeration, prefigured by the pretty recitative tinkling on an early piano by James Johnstone. Padmore brought echoes of Bach – perhaps inevitably – to bear, delicate yet purposeful. As the first part drew to a choral close, the heavens telling the glory of God, the only thing I missed was Haydn’s smile, or indeed his leaping for sheer, unadulterated joy; however, Beethovenian goodness and greatness of spirit were not entirely inadequate substitutes.

 

Orchestral playing was just as beautiful, just as variegated following the interval. Gabriel’s first aria brought a wonderful cooing synergy between Tilling and the Munich woodwind – though was her ornamentation of ‘Liebe’ just a little overdone? Müller-Brachmann’s gravity matched that of Haitink in the following recitative injunction to be fruitful and multiply. Haitink’s tempi were not entirely without surprise; for instance, ‘Der Herr ist groß’ was taken at quite a lick. Crucially, however, it was not harried; it came as release. If ‘Mit Würd und Hoheit angetan’ delighted rather than ravished, Wunderlich’s – and Karajan’s – shadow falls especially long there. In any case, the opening of the third part, three flutes and strings alike, was truly beautiful by any standards: this was a beauty that did not need to ask whether we had noticed it. The opening of the ‘Hymn’ was again taken at a fleet tempo, but if it did not offer the same kind of rapture as Karajan, its own variety was undeniably present. Müller-Brachmann as Adam again occasionally proved hectoring: perhaps the less agreeable side of Fischer-Dieskau’s influence? However, as this extraordinary number progressed, any minor doubts were dispelled. It was a delight, and a moving one. Haitink’s relatively small scale seemed especially apt here in Eden. And Tilling sounded very much a different ‘character’ as Eve. Moreover, Müller-Brachmann naughtily relished the quickening dew, celebratedly echoed in Haydn’s own Schöpfungsmesse. I am not sure that the final chorus has ever in my experience so clearly echoed the end of Die Zauberflöte, not the least associative achievement in a thoroughly admirable performance.

LSO/Egarr - Haydn: The Creation, 12 January 2013

Barbican Hall

Marlis Petersen (soprano)

Sally Dodds (mezzo-soprano)
Jeremy Ovenden (tenor)
Gerald Finley (bass-baritone)

London Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)

London Symphony Orchestra

Richard Egarr (conductor)

 

 

It is not an enviable task, to take over from the late Sir Colin Davis in almost any repertoire, let alone in Haydn. That said, the failings of Richard Egarr in this performance cannot simply be attributed to invidious comparisons. His perverse insistence that the LSO, by general consent London’s finest orchestra, play for much of the time as if it were some rough-and-ready pseudo-‘period’ band was bad enough. If you want a period orchestra, then go ahead and employ one, but why on earth belittle a modern orchestra in such fashion? Even if we leave that aside, Egarr’s manifest difficulty in maintaining a dual role as harpsichordist and conductor told of ambition exceeding competence. Continuo playing veered between the nondescript and the inappropriate, whilst there was great palaver to be had each time he switched one role for the other: a stool to be moved, arms flailing all over the place, and, oddest of all, a practice of conducting with the left hand whilst doodling at the keyboard with the right. Surely if a continuo instrument is to be employed at all in combination with the orchestra – it is unnecessary in Haydn – then the part should be founded upon a solid bass line. Tempi were often not only too fast, but rigidly driven to the point of caricature, a glaring exception being the weirdly distended recitative between Adam and Eve, a point at which the harpsichord became unduly distracting too.

 

It was, then, a tribute to the LSO, the London Symphony Chorus, and at least to Gerald Finley, that there remained a good deal in isolation to savour from this performance of Haydn’s late masterpiece. The ‘Representation of Chaos’ was disappointing: a truly dispiriting thing to have to write. Not only was this astonishing movement taken with a swiftness that verged upon the absurd; more damaging still, peculiarities of scoring and rhythm were crudely underlined, rather than permitting Haydn’s genius to speak for itself. (Such would prove a recurring problem, not least when the composer was at his most pictorial.) Here and throughout the work, Egarr seemed incapable of thinking, let alone communicating, with the symphonic breadth that Haydn requires: Fernhören does not seem to be in his vocabulary. The arrival of ‘Light’ was loud rather than grand. Here, as elsewhere, memories of Davis, whether in performance or on record, and of course, Karajan, died hard. Choral singing was in itself of a typically high standard: real drama was imparted to the episode of the fallen angels. But one felt a certain lack of interest on the conductor’s part in the text: especially odd, given Egarr’s opting for the English version.

 

Moreover, despite the aforementioned tendency to crude exaggeration of detail, when it came to what Nicholas Temperley called ‘the most extraordinary tonal surprise in the whole work – perhaps in all classical music,’ the ‘In native worth’ modulation to A-flat major, it passed for relatively little. Pleasant rather than epiphanic, God’s breath was reduced to an everyday occurrence. A great orchestra can rarely be kept down entirely. For instance, the darkness of the lower strings in Raphael’s Fifth day accompagnato was breathtaking; too often, however, violins were compelled severely to ration vibrato, sounding grey and thin through no fault of their own. (Contrast the variegated beauty of their sound on Davis’s LSO Live recording!) Trombones sounded splendid as they greeted the ‘tawny lion’. The opening of the Third Part, three flutes and all, sounded paradisiacal indeed, though the ensuing Hymn was almost ruined by the ragged, rasping race to the finish imposed upon it by the conductor. As for the martial quality of the following duet, it is difficult to imagine the music sounding less erotic. Again, I could not help but wonder whether Egarr had taken any notice of the libretto.

 

Finley excelled from his first recitative onwards, even if the brass section was forced to adopt a rasping sound quite at odds with its typical excellence. He offered subtlety of shading and of verbal response that was generally lacking elsewhere. He even almost made one forget the strangeness of some of Gottfried van Swieten’s adapted text – except when he, alas, opted for over-pictorial emphasis on the Sixth Day. Marlis Petersen had her moments, and her English was excellent, but she proved surprisingly shrill at times. Jeremy Ovenden’s light English tenor was not to my taste; I found myself hearing Janowitz and Wunderlich in my mind’s ear. Not to mention an imaginary conflation of the best of the rest from Davis and Karajan…

 

Sir Colin Davis: some personal highlights

A touching documentary (click here) will be available until Friday. Thoughtful, profound, without intellectualising, this is the Sir Colin Davis we knew and loved, above all through his music-making. Haunted by death but not afraid of it, it is the Davis we heard in so many of his later performances. It also has some wonderful footage of Sir Colin's earlier career, including a performance of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet.


It is a difficult, indeed impossible, task, but I thought I should select five great live performances, not necessarily 'the greatest', if such a thing should exist, but which nevertheless touched me greatly and whose memory continues to do so. I have restricted myself to those about which I have written here, so we are dealing only with the period 2007-12. You may click on the titles to read the full reviews. (Numerical position in the list indicates nothing.)


Berlioz Requiem

Not quite his final performance, but one of the last, and the last time I heard him. The orchestra and chorus who adored him, the London Symphony Orchestra and London Symphony Chorus, could not have done more. It was fitting, no doubt, that it should be with the composer for whom he had done far more than anyone else, Berlioz, that I should bid Davis farewell. At the time, I concluded (and as I sad, the full review may be read by clicking on the title): 'Cyclic completion, which if not exactly symphonic is not entirely un-symphonic, brought a satisfaction which, if not of the nature of a peace that passes all understanding, nevertheless passed beyond mere understanding. We heard the wisdom and cogency of a performance that seemed to sum up the devotion of a career – except that, nowadays, whenever one thinks that Sir Colin has crowned that extraordinary career, one is likely to experience a subsequent coronation a month or so later.' Though it was to prove a final coronation, what a coronation!


Beethoven Missa Solemnis

With the same forces, but at the Proms rather than in St Paul's Cathedral for the City of London Festival, this was a performance of the previous year every bit as profound, as granitic, as ready to wrestle with the angels, whoever they were. Again, this was a conductor of wisdom looking death - and Beethoven - squarely in the face and communicating the consequences. I know of no performance since Klemperer - certainly not the vaunted Bernstein, or indeed Karajan - who came so close to unlocking the secrets of this most enigmatic and perhaps greatest of all Beethoven's works. If anything, and if only on account of the work itself, it was a still more astounding performance than that of the Berlioz. Sir Colin had a point when, in the aforementioned documentary, he described this as the last great Mass (Requiem Masses being another matter). Whatever one thinks of that claim, he conducted it as if it were, and with all the consequences to which such a final reckoning with the Almighty might lay claim.


Haydn, The Creation

This oratorio will always have a very special place in my heart, not only because it - along with The Seasons - was the subject of what I count as my first piece of academic work, my third-year undergraduate dissertation. Its combination of joy, sublimity, and profound humanity would have seemed made for Davis, and so it was, though this seems - rather surprisingly - to have been the first time he had conducted the work. Once again, the LSO and LSC did him proud, even if the solo singing were patchier. Indeed, I thought then, and continue to do so, that even the legendary Karajan Berlin recording had almost met its match here. If Karajan's soloists will surely always have the edge, orchestra, chorus, and perhaps even conductor may well have excelled further at the Barbican. At any rate, it was a model performance, seemingly effortlessly variegated and yet unquestionably sure of divine - and human - purpose.


Così fan tutte

Mozart's music was of course Davis's greatest love, as it is mine. This was quite simply a performance such as I could never have dared think I should hear. In an age tormented by absurd ideas of 'authenticity', about which he would from time to time most trenchantly express his views, it had become almost unheard of to hear Mozart treated as music, let alone both to resound so profoundly and to ravish the senses so beautifully and yet so cruelly. In Mozart's most perfect opera, so ludicrously misunderstood by many from at least Beethoven onwards, one should experience, yet rarely does, a reckoning with the world's darkness that is both tragic and anything but. The experience became all the more painful given the contrast with Jonathan Miller's tawdry, anti-Mozartian production; Sir Colin's and Mozart's victory somehow became all the more sweetly, deliciously, and yes, tragically ambivalent.


Benvenuto Cellini

Not quite his Berlioz operatic swansong, for I should later hear a wonderful Royal Academy Beatrice and Benedict, this was a performance that almost vied with the stunning 2000 Proms account of The Trojans. (That would certainly have been included, had I been writing at the time.) Again on the home soil of the Barbican with the LSO and LSC, Sir Colin communicated, relished Berlioz's mercurial vision as scintillatingly as anyone can ever have done - the contrast with a hard-driven, largely uncomprehending performance I should hear soon after from Valery Gergiev was telling - but form was of equal importance. As I wrote at the time, 'The authority with which he approached the score was evident from the first to the last bar, and the Overture set the scene for both work and performance. Orchestral weight and lightness of touch stood in perfect equilibrium. There was never any question, given the conductor's long experience with this work and with Berlioz's œuvre as a whole, that he knew precisely where he was going and that every episode would fall precisely into its allotted place.' If that makes the performance sound dull, then I have failed, and I fear that I have. For there was here, as in the performances above, an apparently straightforward 'rightness' to the performance, which opened up vistas not for a physical stage, but for a concert-performance theatre of the imagination. And for Berlioz, imagination is everything.

LSO/Davis: Haydn, The Creation, 7 October 2007

Barbican

Haydn: The Creation (sung in German)

Sally Matthews (soprano)
Ian Bostridge (tenor)
Dietrich Henschel (baritone)
London Symphony Chorus
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)

Let there be no beating around the bush: this was a magnificent performance. I am beginning, or perhaps more than beginning, to run out of superlatives concerning Sir Colin Davis's music-making with the London Symphony Orchestra. This was fully the equal, however, of either of the previous two concerts held in celebration of his eightieth birthday. It vied in quality with a recording I had previously thought untouchable, that of Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic in this work. Indeed, were one to combine elements of both, I believe we should find ourselves but a hair's breadth from perfection. The additional good news is that the performance was being recorded.

This was very much Sir Colin's reading, beholden to no school or orthodoxy. The astonishing 'Representation of Chaos' was played with a mysterious, veiled quality, not from the strings, who minimised rather than eschewed vibrato. This we hear far too often nowadays, or rather we hear it for the wrong reason: on account of some dubious 'historical' dogma. Here, it was done for good musico-dramatic reasons, with sensitive application of vibrato rather than pseudo-ascetic self-denial. The creative act removed the veil, engendering orchestral playing that was sweet yet never cloying, incisive yet never brash, and supremely well-balanced throughout. As ever with Davis, the woodwind provided especial delight. (My Seen and Heard colleague Melanie Eskenazi recently suggested that this might have roots in Sir Colin's upbringing as a clarinettist, and I am sure this must be true.) Those three flutes at the beginning of the Third Part of the oratorio truly represented an annunciation of Paradise. Yet the rest of the orchestra was every bit as good. Whilst I admire the aforementioned Karajan recording greatly, I think Davis here had the edge in terms of careful yet never fussy differentiation of light and shade. Every line told, as did its combination with every other line. This was the Davis of his greatest Mozart achievements - and, of course, the Davis of those wonderful recordings of Haydn symphonies. If only there were more...

Comparisons, I know, are odious, but the soloists did not match the perhaps unmatchable team Karajan had at his disposal. Ian Bostridge presented a finely detailed Uriel, keenly responsive to the sound and meaning of the German text. His reading was not without its mannerisms, especially at the somewhat tremulous outset, but it was nevertheless a commanding, if undeniably 'English-tenor-style' performance. He can hardly be blamed for not being Fritz Wunderlich, the beauty of whose tone so ravishes under Karajan. Their reading of 'Mit Würd und Hoheit angetan' is one of the most beautiful things I have heard, never beautiful for its own sake, but as a supreme expression of Enlightenment humanism. By comparison, this aria was rather plain, although the surprise of its miraculous, Schubertian modulation did register. Likewise, Sally Matthews could hardly be expected to ravish as did Gundula Janowitz. Hers was nevertheless perhaps the finest of the soloists' performances. Where she might have been accused of a little mannerism, in her comely portrayal of Eve, there is ample justification in the text, especially the musical text. Moreover, she handled the difficult coloratura not just with technical aplomb (Janowitz had a few difficulties here, I recall), but with truly musical colouring. Dietrich Henschel, however, proved a variable soloist. There were ominous insecurities of tuning in his opening recitative. This problem lessened, although it never quite abated. He pointed the words carefully, but his tone was sometimes rather dry and lacked character in comparison with his colleagues, let alone with Walter Berry and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (Raphael and Adam on the Karajan recording).

I can happily report, however, that the London Symphony Chorus was superb. This was, without exception, the finest choral singing I have heard in The Creation. It boasted everything: weight and lightness, warmth and clarity, and a keenness of response that would even put most smaller choirs to shame. Above all, it was wonderfully human. In this, Davis certainly had the edge over Karajan's far from negligible Wiener Singverein, still more so over one highly-regarded professional choir in another recording, whose performance is so clinical that it might be computer-generated. The singing was beautifully moulded, yet never self-consciously so. More importantly, it was truly exultant, as close to fulfilment of Haydn's challenge to praise the Creator as we shall have the fortune to hear this side of the heavenly host. The heavens really were telling the glory of God, and Haydn's work was truly enabled to display the firmament. This was a memorable performance indeed, which, unless something horrendous should happen in terms of its transfer to disc, should eagerly be acquired by all those who love what is perhaps Haydn's greatest single work.