Description

The course of the year as a metaphor for life! In »The Seasons« the aged Joseph Haydn composed a large-scale secular oratorio about how mankind is integrated into the cycle of nature – a music that is full of colours, full of brilliance and great rhetorical power, as one reviewer noted on 2 May 1801 after its world premiere in Vienna, writing in the Leipziger Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung: »One moment the music of the singing delights, the next the powerful intervention of all the instruments convulses like a forest stream breaking through all its dams: now simple, artless expression captivates, now one admires the lavish opulence of rapid and bright chords. From beginning to end one’s mood is torn away involuntarily from the most touching to the most terrible, from the most naive to the most artificial, from the most beautiful to the most sublime.« Scenes bursting with life are placed next to gripping musical descriptions of nature, catchy melodies next to thoughtful reflections on life and its transience, vast oratorio scenes alongside folkloric songs full of wit and rough humour.