Haydn's The Creation | London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus

Let there be light! Sir Simon Rattle toasts the Barbican’s 40th birthday with Haydn’s Creation – music that always sounds young.

Out of chaos comes wonder; from darkness, light. Haydn’s oratorio The Creation is more than just a gloriously tuneful retelling of the Book of Genesis. Inspired by Haydn’s visits to London and the optimism of the Enlightenment, it’s a celebration of the act of creativity itself, overflowing with majesty, humour and the sheer, irrepressible joy of life.

No wonder, then, that it’s one of Sir Simon Rattle’s desert island discs: a masterpiece on an epic scale by the genius whom Rattle describes as ‘the most intelligent, the most generous, and certainly the funniest’ of all composers. So what better way to mark the 40th anniversary of our home, the Barbican, than with the full LSO Chorus, an unsurpassable team of soloists, and music that – 224 years after its premiere in Vienna – sounds as fresh as the day it was first imagined.