Helmuth Rilling conducts Haydn - The Seasons

From the Stadthalle Oberhausen, Germany, January 1992 Annegeer Stumphius - soprano Alexander Stevenson - tenor Wolfgang Schöne - bass Gächinger Kantorei Bach-Collegium Stuttgart Helmulth Rilling - conductor Joseph Haydn - The Seasons Oratorio for three voices, Choir and Orchestra 0:58 Spring 33:12 Summer 1:10:51 Autumn 1:45:58 Winter Subscribe to EuroArts: Watch other performances by Helmuth Rilling: Joseph Haydn, who considered his life as more akin to a craftsman‘s career than to an earthly manifestation of a genius, was 67 years old when he voiced his first complaint about the arduousness of his work and the feeling of not being physically up to the task. His librettist and coeval, the imperious and mule-headed Baron Gottfried van Swieten, had urged him to make the most of the success reaped so quickly by their mutual work “The Creation“. He suggested the production of another oratorio addressed to a broad public, this one treating the cycle of the four seasons in a theologically uncompromising manner. Little did it matter that this subject had been depicted hundreds of times in a variety of artistic forms and that Haydn himself had already broached this topic in his early symphonies of 1761, in which he evoked the parts of the day (“Le Matin“, “Le Midi“, etc.). Haydn had aged prematurely, and he now felt the pressure of celebrity. He was to deliver a work of equal if not greater impact than his previous stroke of genius. As soon as he completed the score of the “Seasons“ in February 1801, after two years of hard work, the grueling tension he had permanently subjected to exploded in an apparently psychologically induced, depression like illness.