Joseph Haydn’s The Creation enjoys nowhere near the discographical abundance of Handel’s Messiah, but it is quite well represented on disc nonetheless. In the course of writing a program note on the work, I’ve been re-visiting some of my favorite recordings—as well as a few that don’t float my boat all that well.
With The Creation you face the same basic choice as you would for any 18th-century work: big-band traditional vs. HIP. But the wicket gets a bit stickier in this instance, since the historical record is absolutely clear that the original performances were given by massive forces, and not the usual quasi-chamber ensembles so typical of HIP groups. So to perform The Creation with a slimmed-down orchestra and a madrigal choir is to do Haydn’s original conception a disservice.
Another choice: English or German. Baron Gottfried van Swieten fashioned the libretto in both languages, after an English original by an unknown author that was originally intended for Handel. It’s true that Haydn set his score originally to the German text—his English was fairly rudimentary—but both Haydn and van Swieten took pains to ensure that the work was suitable for either language. The Creation is every bit as much an English oratorio as it is a German one. Some of van Swieten’s reworkings of the English text to match the scansion of the German are indubitably awkward, but with a nip here and a tuck there, no obstacle stands in the way of anybody who prefers English.
My hands-down overall favorite is one of the most recent products of the HIP movement: a historically-informed performance that eschews slimmed-down forces in favor of a grand orchestra and town-sized choir, just as Haydn intended. A labor of love by Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort, on Deutsche Grammophon, it’s performed in thoroughly intelligible English—rather than the usual Hawaiian—beautifully sung, and played to a T. This is the Creation to have, if you must have only one.
I have a soft spot for the zingiest of the HIP recordings, John Eliot Gardiner with his crackerjack Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, also on Deutsche Grammophon. As with many Gardiner performances, tempi are fast and the beat tends to stay resolutely metronomic. That’s either a plus or a minus, depending on your taste or mood of the moment.
On the other end of the scale, a not-particularly-HIP performance by Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting the Vienna Philharmonic, from 1986, plods along from one soggy moment to another. How anybody could make a work as vibrant as The Creation dull is beyond me, but Harmoncourt & Co. pull it off. (Harnoncourt has since revisited the work, with the Concentus Musicus. I haven’t heard that one.)
Among the very-good HIP recordings we can line up the usual suspects: Franz Bruggen takes the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century through a fine German rendition (out of print), as does Andreas Spering conducting the Capella Augustina, in a beautifully-engineered 2005 recording from Naxos. Personally I find the Tafelmusik recording of 1993 a good-but-not-great effort; it’s also hamstrung in my opinion by a rather harsh recording.
René Jacobs followed up his masterful The Seasons with The Creation in 2009, using the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra and his usual array of splendid vocal talent. I’m not altogether enamored of it, alas: it suffers from the malnourished forces typical of so many HIP groups, but doesn’t offer the fire of Spering or Gardiner. It is gloriously recorded, however, and there is nothing about it to dislike, particularly. Maybe The Creation doesn’t need the revelations that Jacobs brought to The Seasons, but I had to admit I was hoping for more than I got.
For absolute middle-of-the-road security, you just can’t beat Robert Shaw’s English-language performance with the Atlanta Symphony and Chorus. That many sound as though I’m damning with faint praise but that’s not my intention: this is a Creation you could take home to meet your mother. Ditto Neville Marriner’s German-language rendition with Stuttgart, filled with fine vocal performances and a thoroughly admirable approach to the score. Both the Shaw and Marriner recordings are full-bodied affairs with nice big choruses and orchestras, nothing skinny about either.
So that leaves me with the ultimate in non-skinny performances, Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, recorded for Deutsche Grammophon in 1964, during the heyday of the Karajan/BPO association. Germany’s finest, shepherded by one of the greatest, albeit most controversial, conductors of the century. It could not possibly fail, nor does it. However, this is a big, buttery Creation indeed, Haydn’s edgy and testosterone-enhanced idiom nearly suffocated under a solid layer of cellulite. Impressive? Oh, yes. Beautiful? Absolutely. Authentic? Hell, no. But I love it anyway.
In fact, all of these recordings—save that Harnoncourt thing—do justice to Haydn’s masterpiece. The Creation impresses me as being very difficult to screw up; it is constructed like a Rolls-Royce, orchestrated to perfection, and takes full advantage of its vocal soloists while avoiding pressing any of them against a wall of technical difficulty. Give it half a chance and it will shine forth in all its radiant optimism.
The McCreesh Creation: this is the one, if you want only one