★★★★★
It's remarkable stuff, at once slow moving and edgy. Unusually for Handel, the central conflict is not primarily erotic. The tragic protagonist is Bajazet, whom Tamerlano eventually drives to suicide, and Handel's principle aim is the gradual accumulation of tension over a protracted span. The scenes between Asteria and Andronico are shot through with the composer's quintessential sensuousness, but elsewhere there's an austerity in the soundworld and an angularity in the thematic and melodic...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-05-08
★★★★★
The piano has had Handel's Eight 'Great' Suites pretty much to itself on disc of late, with Lisa Smirnova's scintillating ECM set the most recommendable (reviewed January 2012). So it's good to find them reclaimed for their original instrument, and by a harpsichordist whose Handelian keyboard credentials have already been road-tested in dazzlingly devil-may-care accounts of the Organ Concertos.
Richard Egarr's approach is not for the faint-hearted though...
- www.classical-music.com
2014-04-26
★★★★★
Handel gives an Enlightenment twist to John Milton's poetry of the humours in this philosophical ode, set by Handel in 1740. To the sociable, sanguine L'Allegro and the solitary, melancholy Penseroso, librettist Charles Jennens added Il Moderato, epitome of 'the middle way/nor deeply sad, nor idly gay'. These are not characters but characteristics, not conveyed by individual singers but vigorously debated by soloists and chorus and illustrated with a battery of obbligato instrumental solos...
- www.classical-music.com
2014-04-24
★★★★★
This collection of Handel arias sees countertenor Iestyn Davies return to 'Yet can I hear that dulcet lay' from The Choice of Hercules, as featured in his 2012 Hyperion recital with Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo of music written for Guadagni. For Robert King and The King's Consort, too, this is an encore: that aria and three other numbers - 'How can I stay when love invites' (from Esther), 'Mortals think that Time is sleeping' (from The Triumph of Time and Truth), and the duet 'Welcome as the...
- www.classical-music.com
2014-04-24
★★★★★
A performance that's a shade too cool to be moving until Orlando's (Patricia Bardon) mad scene. Playing is dynamic, the casting strong, but Christie's tempos and colours are surprisingly conservative. Anna Picard
- www.classical-music.com
2014-04-24
★★★★★
Serse (Xerxes) is unique among Handel's operas: fluid, often comic, fast-moving, deconstructing the conventions of serious opera with its interrupted arias. It needs a special light touch, and Christian Curnyn supplies that in abundance in this flowing, affectionate and beautifully shaped reading. The cast is superb throughout, from Rosemary Joshua's brightly focused Romilda, through Joélle Harvey's ethereal Atalanta (tingling in her Act 2 aria with its exquisite postlude), right down to...
- www.theguardian.com
2013-09-22
★★★★★
Good conductors will tell a choir that the words are just as important as the music; there's no point in singing if you can't be understood. Stephen Layton has drilled his singers to perfection in this trio of Handel's Chandos Anthems, making every word distinct and every crisp consonant a taut springboard on which to propel Handel's irresistible rhythm, aided by some wonderfully tight playing from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2013-07-07
★★★★★
Buy it from Buy the CDDownload as MP3G.F. HandelHandel: Song for St. Cecilia's DayRichard Neville-TowleDelphian2012 The autumn of 1739 was a fruitful one for Handel; he produced his Song for St Cecilia's Day in a mere 10 days before embarking on 12 "Grand Concertos" which he completed before the end of October. Ludus Baroque couple one of these with St Cecilia in this beguiling new disc, which follows their success last year with Alexander's Feast...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2012-07-23
★★★★★
Esther is well known to have been the first of Handel's English oratorios, but exactly when it was first heard, and in what form, remains uncertain. The first version, which probably dates from 1718 and may have been performed as a masque, is effectively lost, and Handel made a total revision and expansion of the score in 1732...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2012-05-21
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