Die Schöpfung (The Creation)
Les Arts Florissants, cond William Christie
Virgin 0094639523528

Haydn’s oratorio is one of the great musical pinnacles of the European enlightenment, a direct product of his extended visits, in the 1790s, to London, where he composed his last 12 symphonic masterpieces and encountered the cult of Handel. The Creation, first performed in Vienna to a German translation of a libretto Haydn had acquired in London, is a new kind of work, a symphonic oratorio, in which Haydn’s genius as an orchestrator reaches unimagined levels of inspiration and originality: its prelude, a harmonically inchoate Representation of Chaos, looks forward to the opening movement of Beethoven’s Ninth and beyond. The oratorio has fared well on disc, but few period-instrument versions come up sounding as fresh and new-minted as this one from Christie and his elite French period band. His Haydn seems to leap naturally from the pages of the score with his vital, yet never driven, rhythmic thrust. Instrumental textures set the wonderfully woody-sounding woodwinds against a background of pastel-shaded strings, and the soloists – Genia Kühmeier, Toby Spence, Dietrich Henschel, Markus Werba and Sophie Karthäuser – are as fine a team as can be assembled today. A triumph.

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