The Dallas Symphony Orchestra is ending its 2018-2019 classical season, paradoxically, with a work about beginnings. Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The…
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra is ending its 2018-2019 classical season, paradoxically, with a work about beginnings. Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation dramatizes the Genesis story, from formless void through the innocent joy of the newly created Adam and Eve. The musical curtain falls before the serpent spoils everything, although there’s a penultimate warning.
Guest conductor for the weekend’s concerts, at the Meyerson Symphony Center, is Matthew Halls, a specialist in 18th-century music. Given what we’ve come to assume about period performances, his cast-of-hundreds approach to The Creation may be a surprise, but it’s soundly based.
The Creation is ordered by the Biblical six days of creation. Each day begins with the Genesis narration, sung in recitative. Three soloists, variously representing three angels and Adam and Eve, muse on the developments in florid texts adapted from Milton’s Paradise Lost. Each day concludes with the chorus singing words from the Psalms.
Haydn composed The Creation to a German translation of anonymously assembled English texts. Published with both German and English words, the latter sometimes awkwardly adapted to German rhythms, it has been performed in both languages; the DSO uses Hall’s own English edition.
