An avowed and much-loved masterpiece from its earliest performances – Vienna, 1798 – ‘whose appeal [I read from A Peter Brown’s DECCA sleeve-notes] was irresistible to the noble and leisured classes, amateurs and connoisseurs of different nationalities’, Die Schöpfung tells the story of (duh) the first week or so of the creation myth, in three parts.

It opens simply, in the humming potential of the void, moves to the first, dramatic, sunrise, and then gradually builds in complexity, as the forces of darkness are cast out and the cosmological items, flora and fauna, are created, one by one, until finally Adam and Eve walk hand-in-hand in the Garden of Eden (which is Kent, right?), Man- and indeed Womankind enjoying a somewhat brief respite before the Fall.

The whole thing runs to 1h45 – which given the amount of ground it has to cover (no pun), is quite efficient, really.

It is said that, inspired by (the success of?) Handel’s oratorios, Haydn asked a friend for ideas for something he could set to music. The friend picked up a Bible and suggested that he “Take that, and begin at the beginning.”

Less romantically, its genesis was in a Handel hand-me-down, an English poem called The Creation of the World (author unknown), which the crowd-pleasing Georgian didn’t care for on the grounds that setting it would have meant a piece that lasted four hours.

The eventual libretto, abridged and translated by the Esterházy’s Imperial librarian/diplomat/musician/Everything Else, Gottfried van Swieten, comprises bits of Genesis, the Psalms, and Milton’s Paradise Lost (the angels, mostly). It was officially published, in simultaneous translation, as twere, in 1800; but with Handel-worshipping English audiences in mind, both texts incline peculiarly towards the Anglican, especially where Biblical quotations are concerned. Metrical considerations have left us with some more-or-less irremediable ‘English’, and surely nothing has ever been so translated-from-ze-German as the line ‘In long dimension / Creeps with sinuous trace the worm.’

Musically, the word-painting is less than subtle, but perfectly in keeping with the standards of an oratorio (un-acted operas for Lent, essentially). And it achieved a trick of ‘universal’ synthesis: French-style overtures, Italian dramatic structure, English verses/religious formulae from the KJV, and psalm-based choral numbers with which the Germans would have been conceptually familiar.

Certainly it captured the zeitgeist (or whatever they call that in Germany). With 45 performances in Vienna alone in the ten years following its composition, and in capital cities throughout Europe, by ensembles routinely measuring in the hundreds, The Creation was the stadium-seller of its day.

My own introduction to it was, predictably, as a chorister in the Church of England (Maidstone, actually), singing the only stand-alone anthem to have emerged from the complete work, ‘The Heavens are Telling (the Glory of God)’. As a classically-inclined young fellow (read: ‘squit’), I would have been one of the younger kids to be aware that Gabriel was not the only archangel; but I also acutely recall one Sunday morning, autopiloting my way through its uncomplicated joy, and brassily attempting to ‘Display the firmament’ one time more than everybody else in the rehearsal room.

By secondary school I’d twigged that there was more to The Creation than just one anthem – i.e. solos, for would-be soloists – and I proposed it for our Choral Union concert. Seeing through this, no doubt, the choir director said he couldn’t be doing with all those Adam-and-Eve arias (‘This world so great, so wonderful’) which, it is widely held, are some of the best music Haydn ever wrote. He was a wise man, that director, and a first-class teacher: but he was wrong on that occasion. Wrong and a spoilsport.

I auditioned for a university choral scholarship with the Raphael ‘rage’ aria about the waters ‘Rolling in foaming billows’, but I don’t recollect our ever performing it while I was there. No doubt such things were thought crass. See also: ‘enjoyable to sing or listen to’.

So I think the first time I ever sang the whole Creation was with the Oxford Spezzati, a group of a few dozen of us who go back, at a music festival in West Kensington – my good friend Al playing the flatulent bass notes of the ‘immense leviathan’ with ill-disguised bassoonist’s gusto.

And the last time I sang ‘The Heavens are Telling’ was in the Chapel Royal, at Hampton Court. I had the bass ‘verse’ part, which I now suspect means, over time, that I’ve sung all the parts of that particular movement. (Aled Jones, eat yer heart out.)

The German is the lesser-trodden path these days (what even is a ‘Finsternis‘?). There’s something a bit uncomfortable about the opening tenor aria’s repetitive insistence on ‘Ordnung‘… But for all its sober origins, the English text is pretty silly. ‘Finny tribes’; ‘flexible tigers’; and I’ve heard at least one soloist word-paint the hell out of the ‘fleecy, meek and ble-e-eee-eating flock’. A note to nature writers: if I find ‘purling’ and/or ‘limpid brooks’ in your work, we will not be going home together.

I assume it sounds quite foolish to the Germans, also. But for all that, it is usually quite fun. (Or it had better be. I’m about to miss the first match of the cricket season.)

Per Prof. Brown, though, the romping tunes and memorable – or, perhaps more accurately, ‘easily- learned’ – choruses make this also a fairly sensible choice for choral societies, whose concerts are, in the majority of cases, a pragmatic combination of the amateur and the professional. The choruses are repetitive (both internally and externally), often interrupted by long solos, duets, trios, etc. (there’s only one that isn’t, in fact), and relatively few and far between. I’m not suggesting that the idea of a choral society is to keep the dues-paying members as quiet as possible… but it helps to know one’s limitations.

In 1808, amid the blast of the Napoleonic Wars, an ageing Haydn made his last public appearance at a gala do of The Creation, attended by royalty and, allegedly, Beethoven. At the creation of light, the audience broke into spontaneous applause, causing Haydn to deflect the adulation heavenwards – but by the time they reached ‘The Heavens are Telling’ his ill-health and emotions had got the better of him, and he was carried out. Fifteen months later, the French entered Vienna, and the last rendition of his music Haydn heard came from the mouth of a French officer:

In native worth and honour clad,
With beauty, courage, strength adorn’d,
To heav’n erect and tall he stands
A man, the Lord and King of nature all.

—
For The Oldie, in a different edit

 
Arriving at Ladies’ College at the seventh hour, game-faced and Chooty drawn, I was informed that the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka’s New World Concert was sold out.*

While a few hundred rupees for an evening’s live music remains a pretty good deal, I have to confess this eventuality had not occurred to me. But I was pleased to see the event attracting a crowd, relieved to get a return from a righteous absentee, and sorry to see that other iniquitous no-show-ers had let their seats simply go to waste. (For shame!)

Though they put their best foot forward from the outset, the SOSL did not (does not) quite have the coherence or verve demanded by Edmundo Villani-Côrtes’ Concerto for Flute and Chamber Orchestra (essentially Western Classical tradition, with Brazilian flavouring). The brass and wind sections, especially, struggled with the punchy rhythms of the opening ‘Gingado’ (though the percussion were conspicuously precise). The ‘Moderato’ was more solid – although I find I now experience a default hint-of-Orson-Welles nostalgia in any and every SOSL slow movement [see all previous reviews].

The ‘Allegro’ is heavy with the roaming vigour of early C.20th Americana – Gershwin, Copland, Grofé et al. – and the orchestra went at it. The result was not always four-square (it’s Latin Americana, after all), but the mellower, sunset-over-broad-flowing-river moments were good, and even the mistuning of the horns [also see all previous] seemed somehow to contribute to the melancholic flavour.

The end came out of nowhere, rather, and I was left reflecting that a) it was a smart move to begin with this lesser-known Concerto, and b) it was hardly the orchestra’s fault that the music itself doesn’t quite seem to go the distance.

Their lack of indulgence to visiting flautist Celina Charlier, however, was reprehensible. The Brazilian could not have been expected to blow much more life into the piece without sacrificing the ever-fragile tone of her instrument; but for the most part the solo line did not stand out, which rendered the whole business somewhat underwhelming.

Conversely, the ensemble seemed impelled by soprano Tharanga Goonetilleke’s authority over the two square feet of stage she was permitted to call her own. Her voice was full-throated and -lunged without ever sounding forced, and her physical performance active enough for the four operatic excerpts to retain the excitement of their theatrical origin. (The imaginative failure of the programmers to consider looking for four songs also from the new world we will ignore for now.)

Goonetilleke’s flexibility, in particular, was impressive. Sparkling and graceful in Gounod’s ‘Jewel song’; vivid in Puccini’s ‘Quando m’en vo’’ (Boheme, inevitably); mournfully beautiful in the ‘Porgi amor’ from Figaro (otherwise a bad choice: no offence to Mozart, but shorn of its context the aria is underpowered and absent its natural trajectory).

The highlight, though, was the utterly sensual ‘Piangero la sorte mia’ from Handel’s incomparable Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Both musically and emotionally, Goonetilleke’s torment was pitch-perfect. Moreover, she had the confidence not to over-reach: the da capo was a model of restraint.

I wasn’t banking on enjoying the second half quite as much. Even with the watchful and experienced Gregory Rose at the helm, the headline item, Dvorák’s tumultous Symphony No. 9 in E minor, From the New World, seemed like a voyage too far for the SOSL and all who sail in her.

But it seems you can teach an old sea-dog new tricks. Some, anyway.

The strings rose out of the mist and the horns pa-pah’d, firm but clear; the woodwind were appropriately tremulous; the tutti strings were a little effete, but nonetheless present and correct; on cue, the trumpets sounded the battle call, a clarion of terrible, crystalline beauty. Five stars, again, to the percussion.

It wasn’t all perfect, of course. Where the cellos led, the others followed (round the teepees, step in time!), but where the violins led the merry dance, things were prone to rushing. Perhaps they were disoriented by Rose’s habit (perfectly musical…) of conducting now downwards, now upwards (…but not necessarily very easy to follow).

But there were some nice touches: I particularly liked the billowing curtains at the moment when the spirits of the dead appear to invade the security of the campfire. And on the crest of the great crescendo I found myself smiling. It was an ungenerous ‘I didn’t think you had it in you’ smile; but they did.

After the final cascade there was applause. Which was fair enough. This once.

Rose sped up the ‘Largo’ a tad. The cor anglais was not pretty; but it was haunting and rustic and honest – think Jeremy Irons’ ‘playing’ in The Mission – and thus, I suppose, contextually ‘right’. The string interventions were still a little thin, frankly. But the audience were patient, and allowed the orchestra to marshal their forces. The rewards were in some delicate duetting between the first-desk cellists, sweet interplay between flute and clarinet, and good cavalry from the brass.

In the slide-show of the earth from the air (the continental US, anyway) that is Dvorák’s ‘Scherzo’ not all images got the same treatment, a few clunked in transmission, and some were slightly out of focus; but we definitely felt we’d been given the full tour (albeit with the wild Hinjuns safely air-brushed out).

And then the final ‘Allegro con fuoco’. Even the violins got out the elbow grease for this, even if they were not over-liberal in its application – and bravo (blastro!) to both trumpets and trombone (from somewhere I caught a pre-echo of Dukas’ Sorceror’s Apprentice that I’ve never noted before: was it them?). The horns predictably wimped out of the vital slog to the summit, but by the end it was as broiling and stormy as could be mustered.

Which is to say… underpowered. Even stingy. Lacking in lustre. The Mayflower pilgrims were a parsimonious bunch, no doubt; but even they might have found two double basses to be unnecessarily cheap (the SOSL does have more). Oh, the notes were alright, sure; but the sound – played so safe – was, by and large, less New World than New Deal: snatching victory from the jaws of depression, but at (a) cost.

Same old, same old. Let’s have Gregory Rose back, though. Why, he even restored the National Anthem to its occasional glory!** [Yes, I’m going to keep treating it like a programmed item, as long as the SOSL keep on performing it.]

He also gave little intro speeches to each piece – about the Latino-orchestral tradition, say, or the fact that the New World was new to Dvorák too – and even, rather charmingly, sang a couple of musical examples. With his modernist black suit, and professorial white hair, he was like a kind of musical neo-Jesuit: Lennie Bernstein (oh, Lennie! Lennie!) meets Benjamin Britten. It shouldn’t really need someone to fly halfway round the world to deliver such Classicfmera, of course, but it beats shelling out for the programme and trying to decipher it in the dark.

—
* Yes, the Sunday Times has not been receiving its press tickets of late. Go figure.
** Is there a reason why this only happens under the foreign conductors? Is it because they actually treat it like a piece of music instead of a dreary obligation?

—
As printed*** in the SL Sunday Times.

—
*** without asterisks.

I appreciate it must be tiresome – not to say slightly unnerving – listening to middle-aged boffins frotting over high-grade music, and that it’s not much better when the middle-aged boffins are actually in their 20s. But what to do? That’s the job.

The CMSC’s recording-quality performance of Mozart’s Il Re Pastore overture had me salivating and (I checked) my heart actually racing. This is what CMSC does best – pieces that are logistically small-scale, but technically and emotionally demanding – and what puts them in a league of their own is a simple matter of unity. Cohesion. Plenty of spirit, too, of course; but mere élan is worthless without discipline – as faithful followers of French rugby will attest.

Can’t say I warmed to the Hindemith, though (cue jokes about what happens if you let a viola-player run the show). Some of the Acht Stücke had more zip than others, but, matters of non-resolution and atonality having moved on in the intervening 80 years, this once-radical stuff now seems just a bit passé and wilful: like looking at photos of your old haircuts. An unrelaxing 20 minutes for the musicians, the eight pieces were nonetheless tidily rendered – this being very much an instance of Ben Franklin’s ‘hang together or hang separately’ dictum – even if the confidence of the delivery was generally in inverse proportion to the number of players involved. Serious kudos, though, for a serious tackling of a serious work.

If Hindemith stück it too us rather less than one might have feared, Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso in D min opened on a far more aggressive note (a D) than one would ever have expected. Weary and unimaginative reviewers like to remind folks that ‘baroque’ actually means ‘misshapen’, and this piece – one of 12 ‘harmonic inspirations’ – recalled a bold and adventurous phase in the wild Western musical tradition. Scored for two violins and a cellist, plus continuo, the concerto strained to heights of tension and suspense that are totally beyond metaphor; cellist Dushy Perera played phenomenally in ‘Allegro’; and such was the soloists’ attack and vigour that their deputies fled their desks.

CMSC’s composer-in-residence, Stephen Allen, was also conductor-in–situ for the Colombo premiere of his Forest Paths song cycle. Musically, the work sits somewhere between John Adams’ harmonic-rhythmic motivation and the intense lyricism of Benjamin Britten (who produced his own good stuff about turbulent seas). Kind of a soundtrack for a wistful-Canadian-poet film that will never get funding.

The text for the soaringly operatic vocal part was Allen’s own, ‘loosely depicting the moods and changes within a forest’. Loosely, alas, was about right. From Mary Anne David’s fragile delivery I identified ‘glorious day’ and ‘sunshine’, ‘I love you’ and ‘little else’. In short, we couldn’t hear the words for the trees.

There is nothing wrong with David’s pitch, and she has a wonderful sustain; but her tone is old and clouded. Unfortunately many of the most beautiful moments in the suite – incl. some elegiac Ethel-Smyth-style string melodies (no relation) – occurred while David was not singing. The ecstatic garlanding that followed was just plain embarrassing.

If the interval was designed to pour oil on troubled waters, Handel’s ‘Overture’ to Alessandro tossed a match onto the resulting millpond. It’s not GF’s greatest work, it must be said, but it was worth it just to watch Othman Hassan Majid at second violin. The man’s action is so smooth you’d think he was miming: the sound seems to just emanate from somewhere nearby.

Haydn’s Symphony No. 39 in G min (‘Il Mare Turbito’ – you sea?) started superbly, but flagged in the slow middle sections. The second movement was particularly untidy, and the violas conspicuously fluffed their few opportunities to shine (every joke about violas is true, by the way). I’m not saying the CMSC were complacent, but they are adrenaline junkies, and they need to regulate the IV.

For whatever reasons, though – a feisty ‘Allegro di molto’; a phone ringing in the audience – the team rediscovered their mojo in the closing movement, which was of truly professional standard. Righteous applause, and even a few whistles. The Symphony Orchestra doesn’t get whistles. Not on the good days, anyway.

—

Two footnotes, which I am inclined to start appending to every review:

1) There is a clear rule that you don’t clap between movements unless the performance has been so spectacular your hands take matters into their own: it distracts the musicians and breaks the mood. This rule stands even when your favourite Aunty is singing solo.

2) When you’re asked to turn off your phone, it’s not a polite request from some over-sensitive-musician types. It’s part of the contract of your attendance. If you’re expecting a call, stay home.

Expurgated version here.