The idea is that Mostly Mozart will stand alone, encompassing its traditional concert offerings (cut down this year) as well some of the adventurous projects that once defined the Lincoln Center Festival, like this staged “Creation.” But the overall volume of presentations has markedly fallen. This summer, Lincoln Center has canceled its ambitious (and expensive) Lincoln Center Festival. As the theme rumbles with excitement, we see Haydn experiment with dynamics and textures to create the light and shade in the music. Equilbey’s Accentus choir, shows Mostly Mozart making good on its promise to reach out to international artists and broaden the range of its offerings. The presence in the pit at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center of the period-instrument Insula Orchestra from France, conducted by its founding director, Laurence Equilbey, and the participation of Ms. This was the North American premiere of a staged production of Haydn’s 1798 oratorio by Carlus Padrissa, of the Barcelona-based experimental theater group La Fura dels Baus. The choristers stood in the aisles of the theater dressed in ragtag street clothes, holding supersized helium-filled balloons. The composition of early symphonies was centred on Milan Vienna and Mannheim. During the sublimely contented scene for Adam and Eve, the blissful pair gave praise to God while submerged to their necks in a tank of water. Haydn Mozart and their contemporaries restricted their use of the four-movement form to orchestral or multi-instrument chamber music such as quartets though since Beethoven solo sonatas are as often written in four as in three movements. The performance of Haydn’s “The Creation” on Thursday was not your typical straightforward Mostly Mozart Festival presentation.

Haydn and then there was light