SCO/Christophers, City Hall, Glasgow

Michael Tumelty

Four Stars

ULTIMATELY, the SCO's performance of Haydn's oratorio, The Creation, conducted by Harry Christophers on Friday night, and the closing concert of the SCO's season, was all that it should have been, with scorchingly-immediate and direct singing from that magnificent SCO Chorus which, presumably through the forensic textual and tonal preparation with chorus director Gregory Batsleer, had the music and the text by the throat, and seemed to secure every ounce of potential impact and nuance from the score. And on top of that, I cannot imagine a more-winning combination of soloists than soprano Sophie Bevan, for whose glorious singing the term "luxuriously radiant" is reserved, tenor Andrew Staples, more business-like in his approach, and, above all, baritone Matthew Brook, whose palpable sense of engagement and sheer fun in what he was doing gave so much to the characterisation of the music.

It was a performance that, once it was up and running, felt as though it was powering along under its own steam, catching more and more of Haydn's stupendous originality of invention as it went, with all the fantastic evocations of the natural world, from the dazzling sunrise and the spellbinding moonlight, to Haydn's bustling, bristling aviary, all the wonderful beasts and the sheer glory of human life, with all these phenomena whizzing by, as fresh as a bracing breeze and with a turnover that was almost filmic in its progression and momentum.

My one reservation is that Christophers laboured the SCO in the introduction, with every orchestral stroke a bit over-weighted, late and not quite the SCO's usual incisive delivery. Still, once it was on its feet, it was away.