“This is one of the Canberra International Music Festival’s most ambitious presentations yet,” declared Tara Cheyne, the ACT’s Minister of the Arts. She was echoing the comments of CIMF Chair, Genevieve Jacobs, opening the 2022 festival season built on the concept ‘Pole to Pole’. Jacobs depicted Canberra’s beloved festival apparatus as “this big, warm, sometimes messy family”. Looking over the 70 or so performers crammed onto that small stage of The Fitters’ Workshop in Kingston, we wondered where CIMF might go in future years.

This occasion was the first of two Gala Performances of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation completed in 1798. Once a staple in the choral society repertory throughout the world, Haydn’s sprawling 150-minute masterpiece is not so often performed these days. Perhaps because it was written in the long shadow of Handel, perhaps because of its contested Anglo-German origins, perhaps because the oratorio form itself has become old-fashioned, perhaps because the old theology, or even the Bible itself, is not so widely read nowadays. Or is it just too long to endure in an uncomfortable setting? (And, heaven knows, the CIMF Director would never, ever countenance cuts!) Whatever the case, we can dispense with any religious misgivings...