Haydns' Creation

Presented in partnership with the Canberra International Music Festival, AHE celebrates a special 10 year anniversary project with Haydn’s magnum opus.

Two hundred and twenty-four years (to the day!) after its private premiere, the Ensemble, Sydney Chamber Choir and three superb soloists will unite under the guest direction of Roland Peelman to perform The Creation (Die Schöpfung) as its first audience heard it.

This majestic oratorio, with its libretto drawn from the Books of Genesis and Psalms, with Milton’s Paradise Lost thrown in for good measure, has always been one of the composer’s most popular works, and in many ways represents the summit of his craft. His transition from a musical depiction of nothingness to the choir’s blazing “And there was light” is one of the great moments in music, and enough to raise the hair of believers and cosmologists alike. The Big Bang is a hard act to follow, but Haydn effortlessly nails it, sustaining over a hundred minutes of orchestral tone painting, monumental choruses and lilting arias.

Alexandra Oomans (soprano) and Andrew Goodwin (tenor), familiar to Sydney and Canberra audiences, are joined by exciting NZ bass-baritone James Ioelu. Together they take on the formidable roles of archangels and (fully clothed) Adam and Eve.

Haydn felt himself destined to take on the cosmic drama after hearing, in 1791, a London performance of Handel’s Messiah by forces of over a thousand. Die Schöpfung’s first public outing in 1799 mustered a 60 strong choir and a Mahlerian band of 120! But, apart from the opportunity to relive the Schwarzenberg Palace premiere without the mandatory noble lineage, there’s much to enjoy in the transparency of counterpoint and lively tempi afforded by this concert’s version.

Back in 1798, thirty police had to disperse the huge crowd of commoners who had gathered in the square outside hoping to catch distant strains of the new masterpiece, so book now before word gets around the village pump.