I don’t always blog about forthcoming concerts, but I try to get around to it when I feel comfortable recommending the concert to my readers. Like the last one, a couple of weeks ago.

The main work in our next concert is a UK premiere of a new work: The Creation, by american composer Dan Forrest. At around an hour and a quarter, it’s the entire second half of the concert (the first half comprises a pot-pourri of short pieces including show songs and pop arrangements along with light classics).

The first half isn’t something I’d expect to blog, and until recently I’d’ve said the same of the Creation. My first encounters with Forrest were arrangements of hymns and carols so ultra-slushy as to be cringeworthy, while his more serious works don’t have much spark of vitality. But recently we had a rehearsal with the (large) orchestra, and I’ve changed my mind. With the orchestra, the work comes to life, and I can recommend it as worth an evening. I shall enjoy it after all, despite the composer’s cruelty to his singers in denying us opportunities to sit down!

This creation comes with some spiel about being written for some anniversary of Haydn’s. I don’t quite get how that works – it’s nowhere near a round number of years – and it also bears no resemblance either musically or in choice of texts. The latter are predominantly church latin, most of them familiar from the regular choral repertoire, opening with a quasi-plainchant Veni Creator Spiritus. And I can’t help suspecting that the movement about the Garden of Eden is actually blasphemous in its claim of agency, though I never learned Latin and my understanding is probably rubbish.

The concert is at St Andrews, Plymouth, on Saturday April 20th. Tickets from (for example) here.