Creation of the World

Creation of the World is part of the international project Let’s Sing Oratorio Music!, whose main feature is active audience participation: children and young people participate during the performance by singing the choral parts of the oratorio accompanied by the SDO orchestra and choir, while the soloists are the winners of the Sacred Music International Competition 2020.

Haydn’s oratorio, Creation, is divided into seven days and three movements, in which first light, heaven and earth, sea and mountains, and everything else rise from chaos to finally Adam and Eve. The three archangels Gabriel (soprano), Uriel (tenor) and Raphael (bass) comment on and praise God’s work. In the last section, Adam and Eve join them and together they praise the miracle of creation. Haydn’s music, both austere and naive in style, can evocatively evoke the initial chaos and violent storms, the fiery lightning and roaring thunder, the light snowflakes and the gurgling stream, and its refinement places this oratorio among his masterpieces. Its performance in history has always been and continues to be a feast. However, when the audience applauded the composer enthusiastically at one of the performances, Haydn is said to have raised his index finger modestly: ‘Not from me – it all comes from up there!

Premiere: 5 December 2021