Haydn: Die Schöpfung (The Creation)

Almost from the moment of its first performance, Haydn's The Creation was ranked as his greatest single achievement. For all his brilliance in composing symphonies, string quartets, operas, and masses over a period of decades, Haydn had never produced a composition of such scope, such variety, and such immediacy. Its text and Haydn's music gave the oratorio near-universal appeal, making it accessible and moving to listeners of every class and even of strongly opposed religious and political views. The Creation was as enthusiastically received by Vienna's Catholics as by her freemasons; Berlin's Lutherans and London's Anglicans and the revolutionary theists of Paris hailed it with as much fervor as the Viennese. For many it ranked with Handel's Messiah as one of the two greatest oratorios - and perhaps greatest musical compositions - ever written.