Gramophone Awards 2025
Finalist - Choral

Lucy Crowe (soprano), Benjamin Bruns (tenor), Christian Gerhaher (baritone), Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Sir Simon Rattle

Joseph Haydn’s The Creation - a musical masterpiece that was celebrated from the very beginning. For Simon Rattle there is no question that Haydn’s Creation contains everything. The whole world. It looks both towards the past and far into the future of everything music can be. It is balance and revolution at the same time – a true work of the Enlightenment. “Magnificent choruses, graceful melodies, the finest polyphony, all firmly anchored in an optimistic view of humanity – anyone who doesn’t automatically feel better after hearing it really needs help,” says Simon Rattle with a wink. “The Creation is healthy in a very honest way,” he adds.

To mark his inauguration as Chief Conductor of the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle chose Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation. After two concerts on September 21 and 22, 2023 in Munich’s Herkulessaal, the work was performed on September 24 in the historic basilica of Ottobeuren in Upper Swabia.

"Rattle and his superb Bavarian forces catch all of the oratorio’s teeming pictorial detail...In sheer exhilaration, then, this Creation is a match for any. Rattle also does full justice to the score’s awe and mystery." - Gramophone Magazine, April 2025