From: rtut@troi.cc.rochester.edu (Raymond Tuttle)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Haydn's "Creation" - new recording on Telarc by Shaw
Date: 5 Jan 93 22:49:18 GMT
Organization: University of Rochester (Rochester, NY)

Many people are afflicted by depressions of various sorts after the
holiday rush is over and the dread realities of winter set in.  I've
always found Franz Josef Haydn's choral music to be an excellent
medicine for melancholy, and a new recording of Haydn's "The Creation"
conducted by Robert Shaw with soloists and the Atlanta Symphony
Orchestra and Chorus may be just what's needed to chase away stress
and seasonal affective disorder (Telarc CD-80298, 2 CDs). 

Shaw chooses to perform the work in English, a more congenial
language for Haydn's happy musical inspirations.  He uses a singing text
that he and Alice Parker published in 1957, one that corrects various
infelicities in the meshing of text with music in Baron van Swieten's
English language original.  Shaw's chorus and soloists have excellent
diction, and so these improvements can be heard all the better. 

One advantage of a revised text and good diction in this work is that it
allows one to appreciate the considerable amount of orchestral
word-painting in this work, something that Telarc takes great pains to
point out in its accompanying booklet.  The orchestra is very sensitive
to musical descriptions of howling winds, the blazing sun, cooing turtle
doves, roaring lions, and so on, and their strong, clean performance
greatly contributes to the success of this recording. 

I've saved discussing the vocal merits of this set for last, perhaps
because we can almost take it for granted that Shaw will inspire his
vocalists, and particularly his chorus, to give their very best to
whatever they are performing.  The soloists are Dawn Upshaw and Heidi
Grant Murphy (sopranos), Jon Humphrey (tenor), James Michael McGuire
(baritone) and John Cheek (bass).  Miss Upshaw's performance as Gabriel
is particularly lovely.  Her timbre is not very different from Kathleen
Battle's, but I find Upshaw to be a more sincere and unaffacted singer
than Battle, who also has made her mark in this repertoire. 

Mr. Shaw wisely uses what is described as a "chamber chorus" in this
recording; the essential intimacy of this work can be thrown off
balance by an overly large chorus.  My guess is that this "chamber
chorus" contains somewhere between 30 and 40 voices, which seems
about right.  The smaller number ensures a crisp attack and
intelligibility of the text. 

It might be possible to prefer other recordings of this work for a
soloist here or for a more exciting performance of a particular chorus
there, but overall, this new recording is an excellent choice for those
who wish to have this work in English.  I think that this "Creation" may
just be more than the sum of its parts.  Telarc's recording is
completely unobtrusive, which is as it should be. 




--
****************************************   Raymond S. Tuttle
"Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod,"       University of Rochester
but it's nothing to get depressed about!   (still with his two little 
****************************************   white mice).
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical