Haydn’s Creation

April Program

April 8-13
San Francisco (Herbst), Berkeley, Atherton, Walnut Creek

Nicholas McGegan, conductor
Dominique Labelle, soprano
Thomas Cooley, tenor
Philip Cutlip, baritone
Philharmonia Baroque Chorale
Bruce Lamott, chorale director

HAYDN: The Creation

Pre-concert talk at 7:15 PM* with Scott Foglesong
(*6:45 PM on Sunday, April 10)

Music Director Nicholas McGegan conducts the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale in Franz Joseph Haydn’s epic oratorio, The Creation.

With a libretto based on passages from Paradise Lost, Genesis and Psalms, the oratorio is among Haydn’s most inspired works. Composed in 1798, it comes near the end of a long and prolific career. Haydn’s subject is the creation of heaven and earth, expressed through remarkably powerful music.

Hadyn was inspired in this composition by another baroque master, George Frideric Handel. Only toward the end of his life did Haydn have the opportunity to hear Handel’s Messiah and other works – and Haydn then confessed that he had never before known the full potential of what music could be. The Creation was a result of Haydn’s revelation – and it became an immediate sensation. Indeed, history records that guards were posted outside of sold-out concerts to manage the anger of those who could not be admitted!

Haydn’s final public appearance was at a performance of The Creation, one in which the crowd interrupted the music with thunderous applause. When asked to explain the source of this remarkable composition, the composer is said to have uttered, “Not from me – it all comes from above.”

Hear this legendary work just as it would have been experienced by its first passionate admirers – performed on the period instruments that Haydn would have known – and accompanied by our magnificent chorale!

More Information

Nicholas McGegan
Dominique Labelle
Thomas Cooley
Philip Cutlip
Philharmonia Baroque Chorale
Bruce Lamott
Franz Joseph Haydn