Haydn: The Creation / Alan Gilbert

On the pulse of the times

The Hamburg International Music Festival 2022 has »Nature« as its motto – placing its finger firmly on the pulse of the times. On the one hand, the coronavirus pandemic created a new awareness for exercise outside, for enjoying fresh air free of infection and the countryside. While on the other, nature has never been under such threat. Humanity has been exploiting the planet for hundreds of years, and the climate change is the catastrophic result. Joseph Haydn’s pathbreaking oratorio »Die Schöpfung« (The Creation) of 1798 takes a paradigmatic look at nature: hardly any other piece of music expresses such obvious and detailed joy at our natural surroundings. And at the same time, hardly any other work shows how times have changed in the last two centuries.