See/Hear

Haydn's masterpiece of an oratorio, The Creation, had the ambitious goal of setting to music the most profound of all stories: the story of everything there is. Haydn's bold use of orchestral color, harmony and melodic inventiveness bring the subject together with a programmatic vividness. He begins with an enormous unison C played by the full orchestra. A flash of uniformity that devolves quickly into chaos. In an almost timeless way, sinewy sounds grind against a dissonant harmonic underpinning. A primordial soup slowly recedes as order begins to gain purchase. There continue to be sudden shocks of creation, but the inevitable cooling of the firmament is near complete. The stage is now set… from nothing, there is something.

– Joe Berger