Published: 06 July 2011
Category: Artists

Paul McCreesh directs the first performance of his own translation of Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten (The Seasons) at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, beginning a long-term project on this work. He conducts the young musicians of the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra and Choir in concerts at St Michael’s Church in Lüneberg (where J.S. Bach was a chorister) and at Christ Church in Rendsburg, on July 16 and 17 respectively. His soloists are Christiane Karg, Jeremy Ovenden, and Andrew Foster-Williams.

McCreesh’s translation offers a new performable English-language version of Die Jahreszeiten, the original version of which was itself a German translation of an English poem – ‘The Seasons’ – by James Thomson and was then retranslated into unintelligible English by Baron van Swieten. McCreesh also fulfils Haydn’s original wish of having the work performed in English.

Further performances of Haydn’s The Seasons, conducted by Paul McCreesh, will be with the Gulbenkian Orchestra and Choir (Lisbon) in November 2011, and with the Gabrieli Consort & Players at the Barbican Centre (London) and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (Paris) in January 2012. McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort & Players will record the work in spring 2013.

This project follows the huge success of Paul McCreesh’s project on Haydn’s The Creation, started in 2006. Again, McCreesh reworked the original English text of The Creation and rewrote the recitatives “as Haydn might have done had he been more familiar with the English language”. McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort & Players recorded the work on Deutsche Grammophon in 2008 and performed it at the BBC Proms in 2009. Writing in the Daily Telegraph (London), Ivan Hewett wrote of this performance:

“McCreesh [is] so adept at combining spaciousness with springing energy. Preparing this recreation of the Creation has been a labour of love for him, and it proved to be a triumphant one.”

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