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HAYDN’S CREATION

NASHVILLE SYMPHONY AND CHORUS

NASHVILLE SYMPHONYNASHVILLE SYMPHONY CHORUSNICHOLAS MCGEGAN, conductorTUCKER BIDDLECOMBE, chorus directorASHLEY VALENTINE, sopranoISAIAH BELL, tenorANTHONY REED, bass

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDNThe Creation, H. XXI:2

Part IPart IIPart III

Intermission will take place at the conclusion of Part I.

FRIDAY & SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3 & 4, AT 8 PM

C L A S S I C A L S E R I E S

T H A N K YO U TO O U R PA RT N E R

SERIES PRESENTING PARTNER

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TONIGHT’S CONCERTAT A GLANCE

• The enormously prolific composer of more than 100 symphonies, Haydn took at least a year-and-a-half to compose The Creation, which is considered by many to be his masterpiece. “Only when I had reached the half-way mark in my composition did I perceive that it was succeeding,” he said after its completion.

• The oratorio depicts and celebrates the creation of the world as described in the book of Genesis. Part One captures the emergence of light and life from darkness and chaos, while Part Two depicts the creation of the animals, with musical motifs representing a lion, a tiger, insects and other creatures. Part Three describes Adam and Eve’s first day.

• This nearly two-hour oratorio was stylistically inspired by Handel’s Messiah and Israel in Egypt, which the Austrian composer heard during his trips to London. The libretto — which was rumored to have been offered to Handel himself — was initially provided by impresario Johann Peter Salomon in the form of a poem called The Creation of the World.

• Haydn took this source poem and handed it to the Baron Gottfried van Swieten, who adapted the libretto into German and then had this new version translated back into English.

• In addition to drawing from the book of Genesis, the text takes some of its material from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Key characters include the archangels Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael, as well as Adam and Eve, all of whom are represented by vocal soloists.

• Mirroring the diversity of creation itself, Haydn weaves a whole spectrum of music history into his score: Handelian textures for his choral double fugues; the Classical symphony that he himself spearheaded; heroic arias from opera; and the popular idiom of the Singspiel.

• The Creation won Haydn the most resounding praise of his career, and it led to several other choral works by the composer, including a series of Masses and the oratorio The Seasons.

• Now in his fifth decade on the podium, Nicholas McGegan is recognized as one of the most accomplished Baroque conductors working today. Well-known to Nashville audiences from previous engagements conducting Handel’s Messiah and Mendelssohn’s Elijah, he is an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE). — Corinne Fombelle & Thomas May

JOSEPH HAYDNThe Creation

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FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN

Composed: 1796-98First performance: April 29, 1798, in a private performance in Vienna; the public premiere took place March, 19, 1799, also in Vienna First Nashville Symphony performance: November 22 & 23, 1976, with music director Michael Charry, soprano Barbara Hendricks, tenor John Aler and bass David Ford Estimated length: 100 minutes (not including intermission)

Born on March 31, 1732 in Rohrau, Lower Austria; died on May 31, 1809 in Vienna

Despite his status as Europe’s leading composer of instrumental music at the end of the 18th century, Joseph Haydn endured a notable degree of self-doubt while at work on The Creation. This score was one with which he wrestled mightily — a fact easy to overlook for this enormously prolific composer — and he let it preoccupy him for at least a year and a half, between 1796 and 1798. “Only when I had reached the half-way mark in my composition did I perceive that it was succeeding,” Haydn declared, “and I was never so devout as during the time when I was working on The Creation.”

Haydn had succeeded in creating his own identity as a freelance artist during a period of epochal social change in Europe — even while he was still officially a servant of His Serene Highness Prince Esterházy, for whom he served as court music director. This autonomous identity, spread across Europe thanks to the power of publishing houses in Paris and foreign commissions, eventually brought Haydn to London in the 1790s for two triumphant, extensive residencies that would have made a glorious final chapter to his career. Yet the aging master refused to rest on these laurels. He would reinvent himself one more time, turning from his unmatched achievements in the symphony to sacred music.

Already in the 1770s, Haydn had experimented with the oratorio, drawing on the genre’s Italian Baroque heritage. But the ambition fueling The Creation, which he modeled on the English three-part oratorio, was entirely different in ambition and scope.

What inspired Haydn to take up this new challenge after his return to Vienna in 1795? The London experience had exposed him to stirring performances of several of Handel’s oratorios (in particular, Israel in Egypt and Messiah). Haydn was deeply impressed not only by the music, but also

by Handel’s ability to move a diverse audience. Johann Peter Salomon, the impresario who

had organized Haydn’s London concerts, had provided him with an English libretto recounting the biblical creation story — a libretto allegedly once offered to Handel himself. Perhaps this added a competitive thrill to Haydn’s undertaking. The decisive catalyst was provided in Vienna by Baron Gottfried van Swieten, the music-loving diplomat and court librarian. Enamored of the Baroque heritage, van Swieten had earlier enlisted Mozart to “update” several Handel oratorios (including Messiah) for their belated Viennese premieres.

For Haydn, van Swieten not only arranged a handsome commission; he also extensively tailored the original English libretto. Its actual authorship remains a matter of scholarly debate. In translating The Creation into Die Schöpfung, the Baron generally shortened the original lengthy text but elaborated or rewrote several numbers, then translated the new version back into English. Haydn set both the German and English texts and — a first for music publishing — had the two languages printed side by side in a bilingual edition.

The Creation won Haydn the most resounding praise of his career, beginning with a semi-private premiere in April 1798, followed by the highly acclaimed first public performances in Vienna’s Burgtheater in 1799. The composer further explored his newfound mastery of choral music in a final series of Masses and in a “sequel” oratorio, The Seasons (the libretto for which was unequivocally authored by van Swieten). But it was above all thanks to The Creation that Haydn spent his twilight years admired as a celebrity-sage. During Napoleon’s bombardment and occupation of Vienna, the emperor (who himself had survived a bombing attempt on the night of the work’s Paris premiere in 1800) gave orders to

The Creation

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T he most imposing challenge that Haydn set for himself occurs, fittingly enough, right at the beginning — or rather, before the beginning, in the orchestral prelude titled “The Representation of Chaos.” Here Haydn brings his expertise as a symphonist to the fore, but he invents an original instrumental language by intentionally distorting the very traits that made him a master symphonist (clarity of form above all) and exaggerating the “tricks” that had been the foundation of his witty style: deceptive cadences, surprising dynamic shifts and tonal detours. The human voice enters in a subdued bass recitative (the angelic role of Raphael), followed by a hushed chorus, which then famously blazes into white-hot C major at the appearance of light. This single ploy — the sudden eruption of triumphant major after painful wandering in the minor — established a paradigm that Beethoven would later use to give the symphony a metaphysical intensity.

Here and elsewhere in the first two movements, Haydn also illustrates one of The Creation’s guiding musical principles: in the beginning was the tone, so to speak, which precedes the word, the verbal image conjured by the singers. With remarkable

consistency, the score offers musical depictions before the objects that they describe are identified. The Creation is a virtuoso score in terms of such gestures of musical imitation. These are scattered throughout the accompanied recitatives, as in the delightful calling forth of the creatures of the land, and developed in more detail in the solo arias (Gabriel’s hymns to flowering vegetation and to the variety of birds, for example). The composer’s approach here was later viewed as a liability, derided as “naïve” by Romantics and Modernists.

Haydn’s music transcends local details of clever representation and generates its own structures of tension and release. The libretto’s retelling of the Creation story encodes an Enlightenment-inspired focus on rational order — one allied to the Masonic image of God-as-architect, with which the composer very likely sympathized. Haydn’s own architecture includes gestures of reenactment to reinforce the most significant patterns of the created universe. Thus the opening refinement of chaos into light is echoed twice more: in the rising of the sun in Part Two and in the first human dawn that opens Part Three. The Masonic faith in enlightening reason serves as a

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

protect the composer’s house.The Creation’s three parts trace the six days

of the divine Creation of the world, culminating in a day of paradisal rest. The text draws on the first and second chapters of Genesis (originally from the King James Bible) and includes poetic meditations on the biblical narrative, rendered as paraphrases from Milton’s Paradise Lost (especially from Books VII and VIII).

Part One depicts the first four days, involving the creation of light; the separation of heaven, the earth and the seas; and formation of the heavenly bodies. Days five and six make up Part Two, which depicts the creation of animals and, finally, of humans. In Part Three, where only Milton’s source is used, the subject is Adam and Eve’s first day, during which they offer thanksgiving to the Creator and then discover love.

Haydn transforms the libretto’s various numbers into chains of interconnected musical structures. Recitatives — both with mere continuo backing and with richly detailed “accompanied” settings — introduce full-scale pieces for the soloists, while each day of the Creation story concludes with a choral celebration.

Along with chorus and an expanded Classical orchestra calling for a third flute, contrabassoon and trombones, Haydn scores for soprano, tenor and bass soloists, who appear, respectively, as the archangels Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael. (Not present in the scriptural account, these three roles appear as part of the epic cast in Paradise Lost.) In the third part, the soprano and bass take the parts of Eve and Adam. The concluding number adds an alto to complete a solo quartet, whose sonority is contrasted with that of the full chorus.

The Creation’s three parts trace the six days of the divine Creation of the world, culminating in a day of paradisal rest.

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compass, though Haydn does not stint on drama and emotion. The rhetoric of Sturm und Drang returns in Uriel’s number with chorus at the end of the First Day, which mixes praise for creation with acknowledgment of darker forces. Together, both elements generate a powerful miniature tone poem of contrasts.

With the shift toward the human perspective in Part Three — note that it is Eve who has the honor of singing first — Haydn writes the most extensive number of the work in the first humans’ song of thanksgiving, which is amplified by the chorus. The act of conscious praise is, after all, what Haydn himself aimed to imitate and initiate through his own creative effort — and what we as listeners are invited to share. Mirroring the diversity of Creation, Haydn weaves a whole spectrum of music history into his score: Handelian textures for his choral double fugues; the Classical symphony that he had spearheaded;

heroic arias from opera; and the popular idiom of the Singspiel. In Adam and Eve’s duet, he even foreshadows the program music of the Romantics who would follow him. Past, present and future become entangled as Haydn instils into the familiar story of Creation a sense of fresh wonder. The Creation is scored for solo soprano, tenor, bass, mixed chorus and an orchestra of 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, harpsichord and strings. —Thomas May, the Nashville Symphony’s program annotator, is a writer and translator who covers classical and contemporary music. He blogs at memeteria.com.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

A s he embarks on his fifth decade on the podium, Nicholas McGegan — long hailed as “one of the finest baroque conductors

of his generation” (The Independent) and “an expert in 18th-century style” (The New Yorker) — is recognized for his probing and revelatory explorations of music of all periods. The 2017/18 season marked his 32nd year as music director of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale, and he is also principal guest conductor of the Pasadena Symphony.

Best known as a Baroque and Classical specialist, McGegan has appeared with many of the world’s major orchestras. At home in opera houses, he shone new light on close to 20 Handel operas as the artistic director and conductor at the Göttingen Handel Festival for 20 years (1991-2001) and on the Mozart canon as principal guest conductor at Scottish Opera in the 1990s.

McGegan’s 2017/18 guest appearances include his return to the Los Angeles Philharmonic

NICHOLAS MCGEGANCONDUCTOR

at the Hollywood Bowl for two programs (his 21st consecutive appearance at the Hollywood Bowl) and return engagements with the Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pasadena, Dallas, St. Louis, Indianapolis and New Jersey orchestras. A residency at The Juilliard School this fall will lead to performances in New York and a side-by-side with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Juilliard415 on the West Coast. He will make his annual return to the Aspen Music Festival as well. Abroad, he appears at Casa da Musica (Portugal) and with SWR Sinfonieorchester, Gottingen Symphonieorchester and Jerusalem Symphony.

McGegan’s prolific discography includes more than 100 releases spanning five decades. Having recorded over 50 albums of Handel, McGegan has explored the depths of the composer’s output with a dozen oratorios and close to 20 of his operas. Under its own label, Philharmonia Baroque Productions (PBP), Philharmonia has recently released almost a dozen acclaimed albums of Handel, Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Brahms, Haydn, Beethoven and more. McGegan’s latest release with PBO is the first-ever recording of the recently rediscovered 300-year-old work La Gloria di Primavera by Alessandro Scarlatti, recorded live at the U.S. premiere.

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McGegan is committed to the next generation of musicians, frequently conducting and coaching students in residencies and engagements at Yale University, The Juilliard School, Harvard University, the Colburn School, Aspen Music Festival and School, Sarasota Music Festival, and the Music Academy of the West. In 2013 he was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Music by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and in 2016 was the Christoph Wolff Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Harvard.

The English-born McGegan was educated at Cambridge and Oxford. He was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) “for services to music overseas.” Most recently, he was invited to join the board of Early Music America.

A passionate performer of early music, soprano Ashley Valentine recently performed the title role in Handel’s Rodelinda at

Indiana University, where she studied historical performance. She has sung with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra as a soloist in Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang and with the American Bach Soloists, portraying the role of Orfeo in the American premiere of Handel’s Parnasso in festa. Other performances include Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, concerts with Cappella SF under Ragnar Bohlin, Haydn’s Creation with the Bloomington Chamber Singers, and Bach Cantatas with the Bloomington Bach Cantata Project.

Valentine holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studied under mezzo-soprano Catherine Cook. Currently, she is pursuing her Master of Music degree at the Royal Academy of Music in London, studying under soprano Lillian Watson.

ASHLEY VALENTINESOPRANO

Hailed in The New York Times for “a performance of haunting beauty, ideally depicting emotional distraction with ultimate economy and

glowing vocal skill,” Canadian-American tenor Isaiah Bell looks forward to a season highlighted by the works of Handel, Britten and Weill. His current season includes Messiah with the Toronto Symphony and Calgary Philharmonic (both conducted by Nicholas McGegan), Bernstein’s Mass with Bethlehem Bach, Britten’s Curlew River at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the Mark Morris Dance Group, and Weill’s Sieben Todsünden for the Toronto Symphony’s Decades series, conducted by Peter Oundjian.

Bell also looks forward to Messiah with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra and Vancouver Bach Choir, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Seattle Symphony. In 2018, he will appear as Urimeco/Sailor in Opera Atelier’s production of Monteverdi’s The Return of Ulysses as well as a return to Opéra-Théâtre de Metz Métropole singing the male lead in the premiere of Pierre Bartholomée’s Nous Sommes Eternels.

On the opera and concert stage, Bell continues to be recognized for his “beautiful tenor, command of style and natural stage presence,” his “willingness to invest himself wholly into the character,” the “fervency and clarity” and “overwhelming emotional force” of his performances, and his “uncommonly warm light tenor, smooth musical line and sound artistic choices,” to quote recent reviews of his work.

Bell received his formal training at the University of Victoria, from which he holds a Bachelor of Music in Performance. Subsequently, he was an ensemble member in the Young Artist Program of Pacific Opera Victoria, Calgary Opera’s Emerging Artist Program and l’Atelier lyrique de l’Opéra de Montréal, with supplementary training gained at the Tanglewood Music Centre, Salzburg’s Universität Mozarteum, Edmonton’s Opera NUOVA and the Victoria Conservatory of Music.

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HHailed by the Baltimore Sun for his “warm, promising bass,” Anthony Reed joined the San Francisco Opera as an Adler Fellow in

January 2015. A versatile singer and actor, he has amassed operatic credits including Sarastro (Die Zauberflöte), Truffaldin (Ariadne auf Naxos), King of Egypt (Aida), Don Magnifico (La Cenerentola), Don Basilio (Il Barbiere di Siviglia), Dulcamara (L’elisir d’amore), Death (Der Kaiser von Atlantis), Spencer Coyle (Owen Wingrave) and many others. This season’s engagements include Count Ceprano (Rigoletto), Tutor of Orest (Elektra) and Doctor Grenville (La Traviata), all with the San Francisco Opera.

In addition to his mainstage debut with Fort Worth Opera, the Alexandria, Minnesota, native has performed with orchestras including the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony, Oakland East Bay Symphony, Philharmonia Baroque and Curtis Symphony Orchestra, among others. Notable performances including bass soloist in Mozart’s Requiem, Adam in Haydn’s Creation, and the bass solos of Bach’s B Minor Mass, Handel’s Messiah and Handel’s Missa in Tempore Belli.

A winner of the 2011 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions Regional Encouragement Award, Reed is a distinguished alumnus of the Merola Opera Program, the Wolf Trap Studio, Curtis Institute of Music and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He has studied under the tutelage of William Stone, Mikael Eliasen, Sheri Greenawald, Danielle Orlando, George Manahan and Darren Keith Woods.

ANTHONY REEDBASS

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NASHVILLE SYMPHONY CHORUS

SOPRANOBeverly Anderson†Esther BaeAmie BatesElizabeth BeldenJill BoehmeStephanie BreiwaChristine BrosendSara Jean CurtissClaire DelcourtAmanda Leigh DierKatie DoyleKat DrinkwaterBecky Evans-YoungKelli GauthierJennifer Goode StevensRebecca GreerGrace J. GuillAlly HardStacey HaslamVanessa Jackson*Jené JacobsonCarla JonesKatie LawrencePenny LueckenhoffJennifer LynnMarcy McWilliamsAlisha MenardAnna MercerJean MillerJessica MooreCarolyn J. NaumannJessie NeilsonMaria Spear OllisAngela Pasquini CliffordBeth Pirtle RingDeborah S. SchraugerRenita J. Smith-CrittendonAshlinn SnyderAnna SpenceClair SusongMarva A. SwannMarjorie TaggartAngela Thomas*Jennice ThrelkeldJan Staats Volk†Janelle WaggenerKathryn WhitakerSylvia R. WynnCallie Zindel

ALTOCarol E. ArmesKathy BeardenMary Callahan*Cathi Carmack†Kelsey ChristianLisa CooperHelen CornellJanet Keese DaviesCarla M. Davis†Marian DorstMary Hewlett Elder*Cara FrankDebra L. GreenspanJudith GriffinLeah HandelsmanKathleen HiltzSidney HydeCaroline TalbertLeah KoestenStephanie KraftSarah MillerBarbara MillerAsha MoodyStephanie MoritzShelia MullicanAlexandra NiederleLisa PellegrinAnnette PhillipsElla RadcliffeLauren RameyStacy L. ReedDebbie ReylandJacqueline ScottLaura SikesMadalynne SkeltonSarah StallingsAllison StokesMelissa SwinglePriscilla Wortman

TENOREric BoehmeCalvin BottomsBrett CartwrightDavid DuBoseJoe A. FitzpatrickFred GarciaDanny Gordon*Kory HenkelWilliam F. Hodge†Scott M. KaranJohn R. MansonLynn McGillAndrew McKnightAlex MooreMark NaumannRyan NorrisNathan Z. O'ConnellBill PaulJohn PerryKeith E. RamseyJohn Mark ReddingDavid M. Satterfield†*Zach ShroutDaniel SissomEddie SmithStephen Franklin Sparks†Joel TellinghuisenChristopher ThompsonBrett TrentJordan WilliamsScott WolfeJohn Logan WoodJonathan Yeaworth

BASSGilbert AldridgeAnthony R. BartaKevin BrennerJames CortnerNick DavidsonKenton DickersonThomas EdenDaniel Elder*Mark FilosaStuart GarberGeorge GoetschelTim GoodenoughDuane HamiltonRichard Hatfield†Jamie HawkinsCarl JohnsonKenneth KeelJustin KirbyMatthew LandersBill LoydRob Mahurin*Bruce MeriwetherAndrew MillerChristopher MixonSteve MyersJason PetersonSteve PrichardJ Paul Roark†Scott SandersJesse SarloDan SilvaMerv SniderJordan SouthernKyle StallonsLarry StrachanDavid ThomasAlex TinianowSamuel TrumpBrian WarfordEric Wiuff

Debra Greenspan, PresidentSarah Crigger, LibrarianJeff Burnham, Accompanist

* Section leaders† 25-year members

TUCKER BIDDLECOMBE, Director