Creation

Friday night we went to the Kennedy Center to hear the National Symphony Orchestra do Haydn's Die Schöpfung (The Creation). They were accompanied by the University of Maryland Concert Choir.

Conductor Helmuth Rilling took the podium without a score and led the assembled forces through the nearly two hour performance completely from memory.

Soloists for the evening were Klara Ek, soprano; James Taylor, tenor; and Nathan Berg, bass-baritone. Miss Ek wore a tight black sheath dress with a short, sheer, black capelet ornamented with stripes and a wide borden of silver sequins. The men were in white tie and tails (unlike the singers, the maestro wore a tail coat, but in lieu of white tie wore a white turtleneck shirt).

Overall, the orchestra and chorus put forth a solid effort, though the performance was not particularly memorable. The soprano sang some nice coloratura passages, and the tenor had a pleasant voice with plenty of squillo. I was less favorably impressed with the bass-baritone, finding a lack of consistency in his vocal production as he went up and down his register.

Cocktails at the Kennedy Center have gone up a dollar. :-(