Haydn's Creation (海頓的<創世記>)

To many, there are few oratorios on a religious subject as magnificent as Handel's Messiah. It was no doubt so to Franz Joseph Haydn 1732-1809, often regarded as the father of modern orchestral music, who produced his own Creation (Die Schöpfung), written in 1797-1798 after he returned to Vienna in 1795 at the end of his second series of visits to England, a composition which he fully expected could stand beside that impressive work of his predecessor without any undue risk of humiliation. It's a massive work consisting of 34 excerpts sung by a soprano, a tenor and a bass (singing respectively as the archangels Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael) and towards the end, by an alto, sometimes alone, sometimes as duets, with or without the participation of a huge chorus to the accompaniment of a chamber orchestra, punctuated with recitatives from time to time to help maintain a sense of thematic unity.

The Creation is based on three sources: the Genesis, the Psalms and the English poet Milton's Paradise Lost. Its libretto was abbreviated from and translated into German by Haydn's friend, the Baron van Sweiten, a diplomat,musician and librarian of the Imperial library based on the much longer English original. If we can hear this work today, part of the merit must to to Johann Peter Salomo, the equivalent in today's terms of Haydn's musical agent and sales manager because when Haydn was leaving  England, Salomo gave him a poem called "The Creation of the World", which he had previously offered to Handel to be set to music but which the composer ignored because he considered it too unwieldy. Haydn wrote the piece partly also because he had hopes of producing an oratorio on a scale and importance rivalling those of Handel's. His hopes were more than vindicated when the piece was first performed in  private in 1798 and in public in 1799. It  drew huge applauses everywhere it was performed, inside and outside of Austria, something which seems to have continued even today. So I could be forgiven if I had some fairly high hopes when I first learned that HKPO and its excellent choir would be doing it.

The complex work consists of 3 parts with 14 sub-parts in Part I, 9 in Part Two and 6  in Part III with introductions, recitatives, airs or aria and duets and trios with chorus and the three soloists would sing the parts of the archangels Gabriel (soprano), Uriel (tenor), and Raphael (bass) and in  In Part III, the role of Adam is sung by the same soloist as one who sings Raphael, and the roles of Gabriel and Eve are also taken by the same singer but some conductors might want to  switch them around. For ordinary listeners, especially when they happen to be hi fi aficianados, what is most important in this musical epic are the accompanying orchestral and even more so the mighty sound of the chorus as they emphasize particular parts of the oratorio. Haydn's intention in this work is to portray musically the process of the biblical 7-day creation of the universe from the primordial chaos and to inspire in the audience a sense of the glory of God. Thus Part One is a celebration of the creation of the first light from the primeval darkness, the creation of the stars, the earth from the primeval void, of day and night, the skies, the storms, the floods, the hail, the snows, the land, the mountains, the plains, the rivers and streams, the grass, the fruit trees, the sun, the moon etc. Part Two sings praises of God for his creation of the birds and their songs, the fishes, the cattle the horses, the reptiles and other wild beasts  and then the creation of the first man and the first woman, Adam and Eve. Part Three sings about the harmony  descending from heaven to Earth, the power of God and how the stars, the evening mists and morning stream and purring fountains, the pines, the flowers, the animals and songs of the birds, the fragrance of the flowers all join in singing the praise of God and of the joy and love that Adam and Eve felt for each other.

We have as conductor Brett Weymark, a tall guy from Australia who has worked with Sir Charles Mackerras, Charles Dutoit and Sir Simon Rattle and premiered the works of such contemporary composers as Elena-Kats-Chernin, Andrew Schultz and Peter Sculthorpe;  for the parts of Gabriel and Eve the soprano Sara MacLiver, for the part of Uriel the tenor Toby Spence and for the parts of Raphael and Adam, the bass-baritone Andrew Foster-William. To help prepare the chorus of the HK Philharmonic, we have Philip Chu. I don't know why, the soprano's voice did not appear to have gone into full operational mode or mood in the Part I. something from which she did not fully recover until she reached Part III. I wonder if her change of dress and/or the kiss given her by Adam had anything to do with it after the 20 minute break. If I were forced to rate the soloists, my vote for the best singer of the evening must go to the bass baritone. A very hearty "thank you" too must go to Philip Chu who did an excellent job with the HKPO choir. I am quite sure that the HKPO could not be said to be at its best last night: somehow the sense of chaos and its gradual emergence from that primeval silence from the deep and its sudden burst into blinding light from that primordial darkness at the start of Part I did not fully come out from its sound. But the performance of the choir and the soloists in Part III made all the restless waiting through the more boring parts well worth the effort.