The present recording is taken from a live transmission of the Academy concert of 8 May 1972, from the Nationaltheater in Munich. The early death of Karl Richter in February 1981 frustrated the intention of releasing one of the great oratorios from his performing repertoire, Joseph Haydn's Creation, in a studio recording. Happily, it has proved possible to obtain the present sound recording from the archives of the Bayerische Staatsoper.

This audio document gives a particularly fine impression of the ambience and the authenticity of a live performance with conductor Karl Richter - complementing, as it were, the many available studio recordings of his wide-ranging musical repertoire.

The audio material from which we prepared these CDs was made from a technically very poor recording. As this recording is in many respects a unique and previously unreleased sound document, however, which has captured Karl Richter's creativity and imaginative interpretation and presents the soloists and choir of the Bayerische Staatsoper in top form, the label and its mastering studio has decided to restore this live recording - to the extent that this was possible - and to make them available to a wider audience.