Chorale Joins Symphony For ‘Creation’
“Bold” and “charming” are not words that seem to fit comfortably together to describe one musical work. But Randi Von Ellefson uses both to describe Haydn’s “Creation.”
Ellefson, director of the 140-voice Spokane Symphony Chorale, has been conducting rehearsals of “The Creation” for the chorale’s performance Friday with the Spokane Symphony. The symphony’s music director, Fabio Mechetti, will conduct the performance, which will also feature three soloists, soprano Andrea Matthews, tenor Frederick Urrey and bass-baritone Gary Relyea.
In addition to opera, symphonic and recital appearances, Matthews and Urrey both appear on a recent Newport CD of Ned Roem’s chamber opera, “Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters.”
Relyea, the Canadian bass-baritone who replaces the originally scheduled Herbert Eikoff, also has a distinguished career in opera and oratorio as well as touring with other members of his family in the ensemble Voices-Relyea.
Symphony records indicate that Friday’s “Creation” will mark the first time the symphony has performed this oratorio.
“I was very surprised that the symphony has not done it before,” Ellefson says. “It may have been done sometime in the ‘40s before the chorale existed. But no one in the present chorale can remember having done it.
“I was even more surprised when I asked chorale members if they’d sung it elsewhere, and only about five or six hands went up out of 140 people,” Ellefson adds. “I just about fell over. I think it is absolutely one of the great pieces of all time.”
Music historians seem to think so. The work is mentioned in music history books alongside such famous oratorios as Handel’s “Messiah,” Mendelssohn’s “Elijah” and Brahms’ “German Requiem.” But actual performances of “The Creation” are rarer. Even Ellefson, who has conducted choirs for years (he is in his 10th season as director of the Symphony Chorale), admits he had never conducted a performance of “The Creation.”
“For me, though, part of the greatness of ‘The Creation’ is that it’s a work of great charm, extremely fun to sing and a very rewarding work to sing,” Ellefson says. “It is real, mainline choral music. Haydn demands a lot of virtuosity from the choral singers; they often imitate melodic lines that the virtuoso soloists have just sung. That’s an exciting challenge for choral voices.
“It’s a very bold work, too,” Ellefson adds. “Haydn stretches the expressive powers of the 18th-century classical style. He pays attention to the text so carefully.
“Many times the recitatives have the instruments imitating what is going on in the text - imitating rain or fog or snow, for instance,” Ellefson points out. “That’s something Handel did before him and romantic composers did later. Even the overture, which Haydn calls ‘The Representation of Chaos,’ is descriptive.”
Haydn picked up the idea of writing an oratorio from having heard festivals of Handel’s music on visits to London in 1792 and 1794. As a parting gift, an English friend gave Haydn an anonymous libretto for “The Creation” based on John Milton’s epic “Paradise Lost,” claiming that it had originally been prepared for Handel himself.
The composer finally completed setting the text to a German translation of the English original in 1798. By this time he had completed all his 100 and more symphonies, most of his enormous output of chamber music and most of his other work.
A pre-concert lecture on “The Creation” by Whitworth English professor Leonard Oakland will be given in the Opera House Auditorium beginning at 7 p.m.
, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Haydn The Spokane Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Chorale will perform Friday at 8 p.m. at the Opera House. Tickets: $12 to $27 at the symphony ticket office (624-1200) and G&B Select-a-Seat outlets.