I took part in the South West Festival Chorus/Bath Phil’s performance of Haydn’s Creation. Our conductor, Jason Thornton, told as that Haydn had been inspired to write the work after conducting Messiah in Bath Abbey, so by performing it there we were ‘bringing it home’.
I hadn’t done this for some years (last time was with the Brandon Hill Singers). One problem with it is that there isn’t a huge variety of mood. The fall of the demons near the start of the work is really the only ‘dark’ music the chorus has to sing. For the rest of it, we bob up at the end of each day’s work and cheer ‘Another winner! Hooray for God!’
Meanwhile we had some fine soloists (Sophie Bevan in particular). I’d forgotten quite what a long work the Creation is, and in fact we cut it slightly.
In order to practice entries, I stood in for the soprano soloist in part of the rehearsal, including one of the long Adam/Eve duets. (Fortunately not the bit where (the unfallen) Eve has to sing ‘from obedience grows my happiness’!) In fact, if I’d been making Genesis’ Creation story into a libretto I’d have done it a bit differently. Haydn could surely have done something interesting with the bit about Adam’s rib, for example.
The performance was reviewed in the Bath Chronicle. It was just a pity that the audience, though sizeable, wasn’t even larger. The concert didn’t get any extra publicity beyond the usual Bath Phil leaflets.