Haydn's Oratorios

[Chris]

As I am waiting for my set of the Haydn symphonies to arrive, I have been thinking about his two great oratorios The Creation and The Seasons. Does anyone have any suggestions for recordings? There seem to be a lot of permutations here - English or German, modern or period. Does anyone have any recordings of these works they could recommend? Amazon seems to offer less samples these days, so I can't listen to too many excerpts.

[Peter]

Yes it's a real pain that Amazon have done this - anyone know why? Anyway I have a version of the Creation with Solti which I like, but I haven't searched for comparisons so can't help you there. I do recall a wonderful version on tv which was accompanied by images of scenery that worked very well - anyone know if that is available on dvd?

[Rutradelusasa]

My recommendations:
Creation
...............in German:
............................Spering on Naxos
............................Gardiner on Archiv
...............in English:
............................McCreesh on Archiv
............................Hogwood on Decca
(these two, incidently, use huge forces, my top recommendation is Spering's).

Seasons:
Gardiner on Archiv
Jacobs on Harmonia Mundi (these has an issue: Jacobs is QUIRKY!, so, trying to make a point on how well birds, dogs and shots are written on the score, he uses a real musket shot at one point, which makes the exactly opposite point).

I still have to find one good all-around recording of The Seasons, Karajan is heavy, so is Böhm, Harnoncourt a bit quirky, slow and not on CD yet, Gardiner is completely joyless, and Jacobs is ultra-quirky. Others are just bland.