Freshness and energy in abundance
Paul Mccreesh (conductor) Sandrine Piau (soprano), Miah Persson (soprano), Mark Padmore (tenor), Peter Harvey (baritone), Neal Davies (bass); Gabrieli Consort & Players Deutsche Grammophon 477 7361
About 180 performers participated in the Viennese premiere of The Creation. And in this seminal 2006 recording, Paul Mccreesh employed a similar number. The choirs of the Gabrieli Consort and Chetham’s Chamber Choir totalled 91 singers, and the period instrument orchestra included double trumpets and timpani, plus triple woodwind.
The results are magnificent, recreating the kind of visceral impact which made The Creation’s early performances a sensation. The great cry of ‘light’ in the work’s opening paragraph is predictably incandescent, and across the performance the choruses bristle with a freshness and natural energy symbolic of the process of creation itself. ‘Awake the harp’ bursts into life, its fugal argument invigorating, while ‘The heavens are telling’ gathers a tremendous cumulative excitement.
At the same time, no other performance of The Creation is as full of such nuance and colouristic variety. Take Raphael’s recitative ‘Straight opening her fertile womb’, which is a masterclass in intelligent pacing and word-painting from bass
Neal Davies, vividly illustrated by the orchestra’s semaphored imitations of earth’s various creatures as they come into being. Tenor Mark Padmore (as Uriel) matches Davies in verbal acuity, and soprano Sandrine Piau is a vibrant Gabriel.
Mccreesh modified the English text for this recording to address its acknowledged errors and infelicities. He also scores by hiring separate soloists for Eve and Adam, parts often doubled by the soprano and bass who sing the archangels Gabriel and Raphael. Miah Persson and Peter Harvey repay the investment with a fresh, bright account of their duet ‘Graceful consort’.
But ultimately it is Paul Mccreesh himself who takes the laurels for this
Mccreesh’s binding together of choir, soloists and orchestra is masterly
virtually definitive performance. His binding together of choir, soloists and orchestra is masterly, and his sharp, incisive instincts for 18th-century idiom are refreshingly free of the tics and mannerisms that most of the rival period instrument versions exhibit.
The closing chorus – ‘Praise the Lord, uplift your voices!’ in Mccreesh’s rendering – caps the performance gloriously, the choir exhilaratingly uninhibited and unanimous despite their number, the soloists communicating an infectious enthusiasm at the ‘new-created world’ around them.