Haydn’s The Seasons at the Barbican review: an exhilarating performance by the Academy of Ancient Music

Haydn’s The Seasons has always been overshadowed by his other great oratorio, The Creation. Even the composer opined disparagingly that the characters in the latter were angels, whereas in the former they were peasants.

But the celebration of divinity in nature by Haydn’s progressive, Enlightenment-influenced librettist Baron Van Swieten, is music to the ears of a more sceptical generation such as ours. Less prejudiced by theological concerns, we may more clearly discern the musical virtues of the work.

And they are many, as was confirmed in this exhilarating performance by the Academy of Ancient Music chorus and orchestra under Laurence Cummings, with a skilfully Miltonian pastiche of an English translation by Paul McCreesh. There are at least two choruses that in their cumulative exuberance equal the celebrated The Heavens are Telling in The Creation and an astonishing wealth of mood and word-painting that exceeds even that of Haydn’s acknowledged masterpiece.

The cockerel’s ‘raucous call’ (a squawking oboe) and the hunter’s gunshot (timpani) attracted sniffy comments from Haydn’s contemporaries, but to our ears, those and the summer rainstorm effects (the initial patter of rain on pizzicato strings, lightning flashes on flute, thunder on drum) seem delightful. As does the witty portrayal of a bagpipe drone by groaning strings and a glorious sunrise crowned by blazing trumpets. There’s even an anticipation of the Spinning Chorus from Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, not to be written for another 40 years.

The progress of the seasons was charted in stylishly evocative visuals provided by the Nina Dunn Studio, projected not on a screen but on the rear wall of the Barbican stage, whose wooden panelling provided a suitable backdrop for the bucolic scenes.

Haydn may have been dismissive of his peasants, but he would surely have been delighted by the three in this presentation: Rachel Nicholls and Benjamin Hulett as soprano and tenor soloists, rough in faux-bumpkin attire but gleaming in vocal allure, and Jonathan Lemalu, whose burnished bass-baritone, shot through with amber and gold hues like a seasoned cognac, offered exceptional pleasure on each reappearance.

There’s next to no operatic-style characterisation in The Seasons, but this trio did the best they could, with help from Martin Parr as staging director. Not until Autumn (the third section) do we learn that the names of the young couple are Hannah and Lucas and a frisson of love interest allowed them here to hold hands.

The final season is Winter, which begins in icy gloom but ends in jubilation. The conclusion may be a religious affirmation, but there’s more than a touch of Van Swieten’s Enlightenment idealism. Haydn rose magnificently to the occasion and may even have surprised himself.