In its latest, budget-priced incarnation, Armin Jordan's 1982 Creation is certainly a worthwhile proposition. Its outstanding attractions are the spruce, sweet-toned and beautifully-weighted orchestral playing from the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra, fresh from their Haydn opera series with Dorati, and Margaret Marshall's contribution as the angel Gabriel. Her avian aria in Part Two balances strength, charm and tenderness, the coloratura perfectly controlled; and her tonal warmth, breadth of phrase and subtlety of shading vindicate the controversially slow tempo for ''Nun beut die Flur''.
Of the other soloists Eric Tappy's robust, personable tenor has the odd raw patch, and his legato is occasionally suspect in his aria hymning the creation of man. But he sings with style, and finds a beautiful, shadowy tone-colour for the moonrise. Kurt Rydl has the authority and depth of sonority vital for Raphael's music, though he lacks finesse and the will to sing softly—the exquisite D major close of his first aria, with its repeated ''leise'', is declaimed at an open-throated forte, and he sometimes seems intent on upstaging his colleagues in the solo ensembles. Like several other conductors (but unlike Haydn himself) Jordan opts for different soloists as Adam and Eve in Part Three. If Huttenlocher's suavely-turned lyric baritone serves well enough for Adam the Eve of Horiana Branisteanu is compromised by pinched tones above the stave, gusty coloratura and some pretty speculative German.
The combined Swiss choruses, numbering, at a guess, around 60, are slightly backwardly balanced in relation to the orchestra, but they sing with confident attack and full, firm tone. At times, though I wish they had been directed with rather more spirit and subtlety. The famous climactic number of Part One, ''Die Himmel erzahlen'', is too slow and earthbound, failing to achieve lift-off even at the thrilling chromatic sequence just before the close. I also wanted more variety of phrasing and dynamics, and more sheer elan, in the work's final chorus. One or two of the solo numbers also struck me as a shade ponderous, notably the trio near the end of Part Two. But in the main Jordan conducts stylishly, and rarely misses a trick with Haydn's delicious woodwind writing. The primal awe of Chaos and the Sunrise are impressively realized, without romantic inflation, and the Hymn in Part Three (No. 30), the true climax of the work unfolds with due nobility and grandeur. If Dorati's larger-scale reading on Decca would be my first choice in this price range for its rather more dramatic, inspiriting directing, Jordan's performance remains an attractive bargain. Shame on Erato though, for failing to include a single word about the music, let alone text and translation.
By contrast, the booklet in the new Sony recording from Bruno Weil gives the German text, a close but literate English translation and a substantial, illuminating note from H. C. Robbins Landon. Weil's reading, using a period orchestra of up to 45 players and an all-male choir of similar strength, is above all a luminous, joyous affair, with generally fleet tempos, nimble, dancing rhythms and a richly communicated sense of delight in the work's sublime, pre-lapsarian innocence. Tafelmusik equal and sometimes surpass the period orchestras of Hogwood and Kuijken in the point and relish of their playing, and the Tolz Boys' Choir sing with brio, accuracy and characteristically fresh, bright-edged tone; textures in the great contrapuntal choruses are lucidly sifted, yet the climaxes pack a proper punch.
Bruno Weil's direction mingles a sense of spontaneous discovery with a strong feeling for shape and structure and a sharp ear for Haydn's wonderful orchestral detail chuckling, bantering woodwind counter-melodies in the Adam and Eve duet, for instance (No. 31), the beautiful sustained viola line in the D major section of the first bass aria, ''Rollend in schaumenden Wellen'', or the distinctive, tangy sonorities of valveless horns trumpets and trombones throughout. Like Hogwood, Weil uses the recent edition by Peter Brown (OUP), based on Haydn's own performance material; and besides many details of phrasing and dynamics one striking deviation from the familiar edition is the eerily muted brass in the introductory Representation of Chaos. Weil's eager, vital pacing and judgement of tempo relationships almost invariably feel right, though occasionally I wished for a deeper sense of mystery and reverence: in the sunrise, for instance (too smartly dispatched), the solemn, string-accompanied bass recitative in Part Two (No. 17) or the Hymn in Part Three, where the opening Adagio has a hint of jauntiness in the rhythm and the following Allegretto trips along too briskly—though, as so often, Weil builds the final chordal section excitingly and clinches a blazing final climax.
The three soloists are all stylish singers, clean of line and tone (vibrato used quite sparingly) and notably flexible in coloratura. They make their mark in recitative (abetted by Geoffrey Lancaster's inventive fortepiano continuo) and aria, and blend and balance unusually well in ensemble. The gracious, subtly shaped trio in Part Two (No. 19a) is one of the highlights of the performance. If Ann Monoyios's soprano lacks the hint of tonal depth ideally required by the central part of ''Nun beut die Flur'', her purity, freshness and shapely sense of phrase are delectable. And like her male colleagues, she ornaments tastefully at fermatas and cadences. Jorg Hering, a name new to me, is obviously a singer to watch, a compact, elegant tenor with no hint of bleat or strain. ''Mit Wurd und Hoheit'' is eloquently shaped and coloured, and he uses his words imaginatively in the recitatives. The best-known of the solo trio Harry van der Kamp, can become parched at the top of his compass, and occasionally spoils his legato through verbal over-emphasis. But he has amply resonant low notes for Raphael's part, sings with plenty of 'face' and relishes his zoological extravaganza in Part Two. He is also one of the few basses on disc to sing really softly in the closing D major section of ''Rollend in schaumenden Wellen''.
Of the two rival period versions, Hogwood's, in English, employs an orchestra of 120 and a choir of 80, dose to the forces Haydn had at his disposal at the Creation's first public performance. The sheer grandeur of sonority is often impressive, but Hogwood's fast tempos sometimes sound more driven than Weil's and, with the exception of Anthony Rolfe Johnson's tenor, neither the soloists nor the direction seem to me quite as characterful or communicative as on the new set. Kuijken's live recording is the most broadly and fluidly paced of the three, and at times evokes a greater sense of awe and wonder than either Hogwood or Weil. Weil, though, conveys most infectiously the work's unique joy and exhilaration, and I suspect that his version, recorded with a fine depth of perspective and an almost ideal balance between voices and orchestra, will compete with the likes of Karajan (1969 vintage, DG, 12/91), Dorati, Harnoncourt (Teldec, 4/87) and Marriner (Philips, 2/87) when I want to hear Haydn's miraculous score.'