Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s first recording of The Creation was a dud, and so is this remake. It’s odd, because you would expect him to be right at home in the music’s colorful descriptive sections and moments of Handelian grandeur, but right from the opening Representation of Chaos the performance runs aground. The phrasing is so clipped that some notes disappear altogether. Climaxes lack punch. Tenor Michael Schade acts like Fischer-Dieskau “lite”, exaggerating his pronunciation in the recitatives and singing with audible strain. Dorothea Röschmann takes all of the female roles, and she’s the best thing on the disc. She totally drowns out baritone Christian Gerhaher in the Adam/Eve duets in Part 3, and as she doesn’t sound like she’s working very hard that tells us all we need to know about Gerhaher.
But the real problems lie squarely with Harnoncourt’s conducting. As might be expected, he is indeed sensitive to Haydn’s more colorful orchestral strokes, especially in Part 2; also as expected, some of his tempos are a bit eccentric (Part 3’s Von deiner Güt’ for example). But most annoyingly, he “feminizes” every ending, even when Haydn is cranking up the tension with brilliant brass and timpani. This turns every big chorus into a disappointing anti-climax, and it’s totally uncalled-for. So predictable is his “soft landing” approach to any number that ends loudly that you begin to dread these moments right from their opening notes. I wish I could be more positive because I believe Harnoncourt is truly one of the great conductors active today, but this unidiomatic effort is neither good Harnoncourt nor good Haydn. A pity.
