How do you plan to approach The Creation and what is different about it?

For me personally, however, it is essential to find something in Haydn’s music that I would call a friendly dialogue with its creator. I think that the sense of simple perfection, symmetry and content of the word is the quality of Haydn’s music, which does not tolerate any manipulation, attempt to shock, or its misuse for the presentation of one’s own ego. In this, Haydn reminds me more of Bach than of Handel. Handel expects and needs a creative approach from the performer with his score and can tolerate quite a lot of interpretation, or let’s say stylization. In contrast, with Haydn or Bach, everything is already contained in the score itself. My approach will therefore be in the spirit of a respectful dialogue with the master.

Where does The Creation sit in the history of pieces of the Enlightenment?

The Creation is a work that combines the old with the new in a fascinating way. Haydn wrote his last opera in 1791 (L ‘anima del filosofo) , and the Creation (1796-8) is in a way the culmination of Haydn’s musical dramatic language. We find here many beautiful dramatic moments that directly call for visual representation, such as the explosion of light “Let there be light” or the thoroughly operatic dialogue of Adam and Eve. It would be difficult to find a more avant-garde musical structure at the end of the 18th century than the depiction of chaos at the beginning of the world in the Introduction, and so we could go on…

On the other hand, the Creation is to a large extent a very traditionally religious work, having a strong support in the Old Testament model. After all, Haydn himself admits that while composing the Creation “he was more pious than ever before”. From a musical point of view, Haydn is undoubtedly an invaluable syntheticist and modernist, but from a philosophical point of view his approach to the work is rather traditional.

What is the link to Handel, and how has it been inspired by Handel from your perspective?

That the impetus for composing a large oratorio came from Haydn’s London stays of 1791-2 and 1794-5 implies that Haydn was naturally influenced by Handel’s English tradition and his oratorios. Listening to Haydn’s sonorous and wonderfully descriptive score, one cannot help but recall Handel’s Israel in Egypt with its equally brilliant rendition of the Plagues of Egypt or ”The people that walked in darkness” from Messiah.

Václav Luks will be joining us on Wednesday 27 May.