News Story

Temple Square Chorale to Present Haydn's The Creation

SALT LAKE CITY —; The Temple Square Chorale and members of the Orchestra at Temple Square will present Haydn's The Creation on Friday, 28 February, in the Libby Gardner Concert Hall at the University of Utah and on Saturday, 1 March, in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Both performances will begin at 7:30 p.m.

The performances, directed by Mack Wilberg, music director of the chorale, will be joined by guest soloists Sylvia McNair, soprano, Erin Palmer, soprano, Robert Breault, tenor, Michael Chipman, baritone, and Clayton Brainerd, bass. Speaking of Haydn's work, Wilberg said, "After Handel's Messiah, The Creation is the most beloved and frequently performed sacred work, so it was a work that we were anxious to perform for our local audiences."

Although a progressive and enlightened thinker, Haydn attributed The Creation, his greatest and most ambitious composition, to his simple and all-encompassing religious faith that had marked his life since early childhood in a humble Austrian peasant setting.

Composing sacred music, as Haydn understood it, always began with a prayer for inspiration. He could conceive God only "as a being infinitely great and infinitely good, and the idea of this latter attribute of the divine nature fills me with such confidence, such joy, that I should set even a requiem to cheerful music."

No tickets are required for the Friday performance at Libby Gardner Concert Hall. Free tickets are required for the Saturday performance in the Tabernacle and are available to the public at the Conference Center ticket office (door 4) from 10:00 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and on the Internet (www.lds.org/events). The doors at both venues will open at 6:30 p.m., and the length of the performance will be approximately 90 minutes. Seating is limited to persons 8 years of age and older.

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