The Creation is heard and recorded less often today than some of Haydn's symphonies, quartets and concertos. But it is the one work of his that has remained consistently in the repertory from the day it was first performed.
Composed by Haydn in the astonishing last decade of his life, when he threw most of his energy into choral music, it glows from end to end with a serene optimism about the beauty of the world and the glory of human life.
Although John Milton's Paradise Lost was among his literary sources, Adam and Eve are portrayed without the slightest hint of the fall that is to come.
None of Haydn's operas has ever made it to the repertory, partly because none of them contains the musically fuelled dramatic tension that opera needs. So The Creation was the perfect medium for him: all narrative, interspersed with stirring choruses that see humanity in the unshadowed positive light of the late 18th century.
The difficulty in a performance is to find some way of giving shape and tension to almost two hours of this optimism. Allow it to become unremitting prettiness and you are sunk.
Harry Christophers conducted a performance that risked that danger in several ways. The choice of the BBC Singers for the chorus was the first risk. Technically they present no risk at all: one feels that nothing can go wrong with such a superb group. But though their 34 voices are so focused that they can produce the volume of a choir twice the size, they still lacked the sheer wall of sound that Haydn's massive choruses demand. Perhaps they would have made a greater impact if Christophers had used a smaller string section.
The BBC Philharmonic were on excellent form and produced some gloriously refined playing. If rather more details went awry than usual, that may have resulted from unclear direction.
In general it was a performance that lacked distinctions between loud and soft: that was the second risk and probably the reason that the warm glow of the music lost its momentum towards the end.
The soloists were led by Nancy Argenta's marvellously life-enhancing soprano: hers is a voice ideally built for Haydn's flowing lines and glittering high notes, her every sound so enticing that one just wallowed in its beauty. William Kendall, replacing an indisposed John Mark Ainsley, presented the tenor solos with an excellent sense of the style and a fine range of colour. But it was, as so often, Michael George who stole the show: his glorious bass voice was complemented by an unmatched clarity of diction and a rare ability to inject dramatic power into music that can so easily become anodyne.
