Reviews

Review: Die Schöpfung

05.06.2009

"I had never heard of it before, but it seems there is a website that makes top-notch concerts, particularly from the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, accessible in pictures and sound to a large audience: www.monteverdi.tv. Tomorrow, Whit Sunday, Die Schöpfung by Haydn will be broadcast live on the site, in a production which has already been given a decent warm-up during concerts in Zwolle on Thursday and Arnhem yesterday.
And top-notch is certainly what this Schöpfung is. A Nederlands Kamerkoor singing delicately as always, a Concerto d’Amsterdam in surprisingly good form, three first-rate soloists and a conductor who maintained a high level of panache in the performance from start to finish: this was a most enjoyable evening. Not only for the audience, incidentally: the performers were visibly deriving pleasure from this experience, which was clearly special for them too.
The choir’s role in Die Schöpfung is relatively modest; it is above all the soloists who are responsible for carrying this brilliant musical expression of the Bible story. Soprano Johanette [sic] Zomer and tenor Marcel Beekman are more capable of this than most other Dutch singers. In the famous bird aria Zomer occasionally even almost ran off the road in some rather over-enthusiastic excursions, but apart from that she and Beekman performed beyond reproach. Baritone André Morsch exhibited a fine sound, but also experienced a few minor intonation problems. Fortunately he and the soprano did not ham it up and were not too cloying in the Adam and Eve section.
Klaas Stok, officially the choirmaster of the NKK, is becoming increasingly impressive as a conductor. I’ve always had a little trouble getting used to his angular style, but in this oratorio, so packed with effects, he achieves fantastic results with it. It is also noticeable that he moderates his initially fairly enthusiastic tempi as the contemplative conclusion of the work approaches, as if therein lies the essence of Haydn’s masterpiece. [...]”

Tom Ruijfrok in De Gelderlander, 30 May 2009