Die Schöpfung (The Creation) - Franz Joseph Haydn
Presented with support from Yale School of Music
Yale Schola Cantorum joined by Juilliard415
Masaaki Suzuki, conductor
with members of the Yale Baroque Ensemble, Riccardo Minasi, concertmaster
Soloists: Jessica Petrus as Gabriel, John Taylor Ward as Raphael, Steven Soph as Uriel, Daniel Moore as Adam, and Megan Chartrand as Eve
Woolsey Hall
500 College Street, New Haven
Also to be performed at:
Saint Bartholomew’s Church
325 Park Avenue, at 51st Street
New York City
April 30, 2012, 7:30pm
Info at 212.378.0222 or here
Masaaki Suzuki will lead the combined forces of Yale Schola Cantorum, Juilliard415, and members of the Yale Baroque Ensemble in performances in New Haven and New York of one of Haydn’s greatest masterpieces on April 29 and 30. This is the second collaboration of Yale Schola Cantorum and Juilliard415.
Die Schöpfung (The Creation) is Haydn’s best-loved oratorio, completed in 1797 when the composer was at the height of his powers. Inspired by the oratorios of Handel, which he had heard while in London, Haydn brought to this work his optimism and his sense of joy in the natural world. It opens with the remarkable “Representation of Chaos” and, in three sections, depicts the six days of creation and the innocent wonder of Adam and Eve. The libretto, which draws from the Book of Genesis and Milton’s Paradise Lost, was adapted from one that was written for, but not used by, Handel. In the words of the Baron van Swieten, who edited the libretto, “such an exalted subject [gave] Haydn the opportunity … to show the whole compass of his profound accomplishments and to express the full power of his inexhaustible genius.” This performance is sung in German, the language closest to Haydn’s musical conception.
Since founding Bach Collegium Japan in 1990, Masaaki Suzuki has established himself as a leading authority on the works of J.S. Bach. He has remained the group’s music director ever since, taking it regularly to major venues and festivals in Europe and the United States. In addition to working with renowned period ensembles, such as Collegium Vocale Gent and Philharmonia Baroque, he is invited to conduct modern instrument orchestras in repertoire as diverse as Britten, Haydn, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Stravinsky. He is the principal conductor of the Yale Schola Cantorum.
Yale Schola Cantorum, founded in 2003 by Simon Carrington, is a 24-voice chamber choir that sings in concerts and choral services. Supported by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music with the School of Music, it specializes in music from before 1750 and the last hundred years. Since 2009 Schola Cantorum has been under the direction of conductor Masaaki Suzuki.
In addition to performing regularly in New Haven and New York, the choir records and tours nationally and internationally. Schola Cantorum’s live recording with Robert Mealy and Yale Collegium Musicum of Heinrich Biber’s 1693 Vesperae longiores ac breviores received international acclaim from the early music press, as have subsequent CDs of J.S. Bach’s rarely heard 1725 version of the St. John Passion and Antonio Bertali’s Missa resurrectionis. A commercial recording on the Naxos label of Mendelssohn and Bach Magnificats was released in fall 2009. Schola Cantorum has toured internationally in England, Hungary, France, China, South Korea, and Italy, and will travel to Athens and Istanbul in May of 2012.
Since its founding in 2009, Juilliard415 has received critical praise for its performances of both rare and canonical works of the 17th and 18th centuries. The ensemble, which takes its name from the pitch commonly accepted for the performance of Baroque music (A=415), performs a wide range of repertoire in a number of different guises, from the consort music of 17th-century Venetian composers like Castello and Buonamente to the great masterworks of J. S. Bach to the symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, all under the direction of distinguished resident and guest artists.The group also tours extensively.
Juilliard415’s concerts are presented in high-profile performance venues at Lincoln Center and elsewhere and are frequently reviewed in the New York Times and other print and online publications.
The Yale Baroque Ensemble, directed by the baroque violinist Robert Mealy, is a postgraduate quartet at the Yale School of Music dedicated to the highest level of study and performance of the Baroque repertoire. Using Yale’s collection of period instruments and bows, members of the ensemble go through an intensive one-year program of study, immersing themselves in the chamber and solo repertoire from 1600 to 1785. The Yale Baroque Ensemble is presented in a series of concerts each year, including a special appearance last spring at Carnegie’s Weill Hall as part of the “Yale at Carnegie” series.
Both the New Haven and New York concerts are free and open to the public; no tickets are required.
On Saturday, April 28, there will be an afternoon symposium on The Creation in Context, which is also free and open to the public.