The Glasshouse

In June 1792, Joseph Haydn encountered one of the scientific wonders of the age. He recorded the occasion in his personal notebook:

On 15^th June I went from Windsor to Doctor Herschel, where I saw the great telescope. It is 40 feet long and 5 feet in diameter. The machinery is very big, but so ingenious that a single man can put it in motion with the greatest ease.

When Haydn had arrived in England, 18 months earlier, he’d started noting down his reactions to everything from Royal Navy warships to Cockney slang. William Herschel’s telescope (actually, it seems likely that Haydn was welcomed and shown around by Herschel’s sister and fellow-astronomer Caroline) clearly made an impression upon him. Not, perhaps, one that struck as close to his personal interests as the massive Handel Commemoration Festival at Westminster Abbey in May 1791, at which an orchestra and chorus of over 1000 performed Israel in Egypt and Messiah to a huge and receptive audience. But it was an experience that clearly excited the imagination of a composer with a lively and receptive mind.

Before leaving England in 1795, Haydn acquired an English libretto, of unknown authorship, for an oratorio based on Milton’s Paradise Lost. Modest about his grasp of English, he enlisted the Viennese polymath Baron Gottfried van Swieten “to clothe the poem in German garb”. Van Swieten’s translation is the text that Haydn set as The Creation – and which Haydn, aware of his huge English-speaking fanbase, had translated back into English as The Creation. Completed in the autumn of 1797, Die Schöpfung / The Creation became the first work in musical history to be published bilingually, though the actual premiere took place on 30th April 1798, at the Palais Schwarzenberg in Vienna. The reaction was ecstatic.

The subject could hardly have suited Haydn better. His overwhelming impulse in The Creation was to communicate – and to do so as vividly and directly as possible. There’s something simultaneously touching and sublime about his musical portrayals of the weather; the sun and moon; the tiger, the whale and (of course) the humble earthworm. The tonally-ambiguous prelude, depicting a chaotic universe before the divine Word (or if you prefer, the Big Bang) is a radical masterpiece in its own right. But Haydn planned it as part of a greater design. Chaos is defeated by a dazzling affirmation of tonality – a mighty burst of C major as God creates light. And throughout The Creation, passages of relaxation and playful humour are balanced by music of visionary grandeur, and choruses of a scale and impact unheard since Handel.

Haydn’s contemporaries felt it then, as we feel it today. Haydn’s final public appearance was at a performance of The Creation at the University of Vienna in honour of his 76^th birthday, on 27^th March 1808. At the words And There Was Light the entire audience erupted into spontaneous applause. Haydn, no longer able to stand unaided, raised his arms to heaven and declared, “Not from me – it all comes from above”.

Richard Bratby

Equally at home on the concert and opera stages, Carolyn Sampson has enjoyed notable successes in the UK as well as throughout Europe and the rest of the world.

The 23/24 season marked an incredible achievement for Carolyn as she celebrated her recording legacy with the release of her 100th album as a featured solo artist. Over the last twenty-five years of her career, she has sung with countless world-class musicians and these recordings serve as testament to both her versatility as an artist and the scope of her repertoire. In 2024 she was awarded an OBE in the King’s New Year Honours, was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music and was the winner of the Gramophone Artist of the Year Award.

On the opera stage she has appeared with English National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Berlin Staatsoper, Scottish Opera and Opéra de Paris, amongst others, and she regularly performs at the BBC Proms and with orchestras including the Bach Collegium Japan, Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Vienna Symphony Orchestra and with numerous orchestras in the UK & USA. A recent highlight was her debut at Berlin Staatsoper singing Créuse in a new Peter Sellers production of Charpentier’s Medée conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

A consummate recitalist, Carolyn Sampson appears regularly at the Wigmore Hall and has given recitals at the Oxford International Song Festival, Leeds Lieder, Saintes and Aldeburgh Festivals as well as at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Barcelona, Freiburg, Oper Frankfurt, Pierre Boulez Saal Berlin, Vienna Konzerthaus, Carnegie Hall and on tour in Japan.

Carolyn has an extensive discography appearing on the Harmonia Mundi, BIS, Hyperion, Virgin Classics, DG Archiv, Linn Records, BIS and Vivat labels. Her recording with Ex Cathedra, ‘A French Baroque Diva’ won the recital award in the 2015 Gramophone Awards, and her disc of Bach Cantatas with Freiburger Barockorchester was awarded a Diapason D’or. The past seasons have seen the release of many acclaimed recordings, notably Carolyn’s first solo orchestra CD, Canteloube ‘Chants d’Auvergne’ with Tapiola Sinfonietta and Pascal Rophé and the acclaimed album Trennung: Songs of Separation with Kristian Bezuidenhout, both under the BIS label.

This season includes Berlioz Hermine with Kammerakademie Potsdam, Stravinsky Pulcinella with Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana under Charles Dutoit, Mahler’s Second Symphony Symphony under Osmo Vänskä and Bach St Matthew Passion under Laurence Cummings both with Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Bach Christmas Oratorio with Netherlands Kammerkoor, and a programme of Mozart and Telemann with Handel & Haydn Society of Boston.

British bass William Thomas is fast making a name for himself as one of today’s most promising young singers.

His operatic roles in the 2025/26 season include Hebrew Samson et Dalilah and Sparafucile Rigoletto for the Royal Ballet and Opera, Colline La bohème for Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Mr Flint Billy Budd for the Glyndebourne Festival and Ormonte Partenope for the English National Opera. Appearances on the concert stage include Berlioz’s Roméo et Juliette with Robin Ticciati and Symphonieorchester des BayerischenRundfunks, Hérode L’enfance du Christ at Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, a tour of Johannes-Passion with Il Pomo d’Oro, Messiah and Mozart’s Requiem with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra, and The Dream of Gerontius with the London Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Sir Antonio Pappano.

Other recent appearances include a debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich as Colline La bohème, Sparafucile Rigoletto in a return to the English National Opera, his Carnegie Hall debut in Bach’s Johannes-Passion with the Orchestra of St Luke’s/Bernard Labadie, Second Soldier in Salome with the London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Antonio Pappano, and a return to te Salzburg Festival for Bruckner Mass no. 3 in F Minor with Vienna Philharmonic/Riccardo Muti. William has also performed at Wiener Staatsoper; Opéra national de Paris; La Scala, Milan; the BBC Proms and the Glyndebourne, Edinburgh and Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festivals.

A graduate of the opera course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, William has been awarded a number of major prizes, including winning the Kathleen Ferrier Award, John Christie Award, and Veronica Dunne International Singing Competition.

Chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia is a vital part of the Royal Northern Sinfonia musical family, based at The Glasshouse International Centre for Music in Gateshead. They shine in the great choral masterpieces by Handel, Haydn and Mozart, excel with contemporary classical music by today’s brightest composers, and bring film scores to life at live screenings of Hollywood blockbusters such as Home Alone, Hocus Pocus and Star Wars.

They perform with Royal Northern Sinfonia several times a year and classic choral masterpieces like Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Magnificat are the foundation of their exciting, vibrant programme.

The Chorus also enjoy new contemporary music, giving the world premiere of All My Ships Are White by Sarah Lianne Lewis in July 2022, commissioning A blue and tender flower by Kerensa Briggs to mark their 50^th anniversary in October 2023 and including Eleanor Cully-Boehringer’s Snow on Snow in festive concert tour A Choral Nativity.

Beyond the concert hall, they regularly perform on their own across the North East and Cumbria, and collaborate with other local musicians, such as Gateshead Care Home Choir. Through the difficult COVID-19 lockdowns, they kept on singing at home and created the award-winning digital experience The World How Wide – a beautiful choral reworking of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis.

Founded in 1973 by Royal Northern Sinfonia’s timpanist Alan Fearon, the Chorus currently has over 80 members from all walks of life and all across the North East. New members are welcome to join at any time, email chorusrns@theglasshouseicm.org to find out more and arrange to come to a rehearsal or two before auditioning with Chorus Director Tim Burke.