Although he was born Austrian and did not speak Hungarian, Joseph Haydn’s work is a part of Hungary’s musical history as he spent more than three decades in the court of the Esterházy family. After his employer passed away, Haydn travelled freely in Europe, now as a world-famous composer. It was on returning from visits to London that he wrote his two large-scale late masterworks, the oratorios The Seasons and The Creation. The première of the latter work in Hungary is commemorated in the name of the Buda street Alkotás utca: two years after its world première in Vienna, the oratorio was heard for the first time in the Hungarian capital on 8 March 1800, conducted by the elderly composer, at the wedding and birthday celebrations of Archduke Joseph of Austria and the Romanov Grand Duchess Alexandra Pavlovna.
More than 200 years later, The Creation once again played an important part in our musical life when it was performed for the first time in the Béla Bartók National Concert Hall at the New Year’s concert in 2008. After guest appearances by Helmuth Rilling and René Jacobs in preceding years, Ádám Fischer – to whom Haydn’s style is like a mother tongue – returns to the podium in 2015 with his fantastic ensemble the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, and accompanied by internationally renowned soloists and the superb Purcell Choir, to perform this masterpiece portraying the triangle of God, nature and mankind in music. The music vividly evokes chaos and the stages of the world’s creation, with water, darkness and light, insects, birds and rivers proclaiming the boundless richness of life. Once again it is worth our while to start the year with this masterwork.

Presented by: Palace of Arts