Handel
Brockes-Passion, Arcangelo, Cohen, Wigmore Hall review – hybrid HandelWednesday, 09 October 2019
Handel’s Brockes-Passion is a curious piece - sacred but not liturgical, and with a strong influence from opera, though it is a concert work. Solo voices predominate, and the singers assembled at Wigmore Hall were mostly fine. Jonathan Cohen and his... Read more... |
Agrippina, Royal Opera review - carry on up the CampidoglioTuesday, 24 September 2019
It was said of the Venetian audiences randy for the satirical antique of Handel's first great operatic cornucopia in 1709 that "a stranger who should have seen the manner in which they were affected, would have imagined they were all distracted".... Read more... |
Prom 55: Jephtha, SCO & Chorus, Egarr review - shock of the new in sacrificial oratorioSaturday, 31 August 2019
Human sacrifice has a disconcerting and wonderful effect upon great composers, above all when it involves the supremely queasy issue of a father vowing to offer up his child: think of Britten with Abraham and Isaac, Mozart with Idomeneo and Idamante... Read more... |
Belshazzar, The Grange Festival review – songs of freedomMonday, 24 June 2019
Cut almost anywhere into the lesser-known seams of Handel’s oratorios and you may strike plentiful nuggets of the purest gold. It may not be quite the case that Handel's Belshazzar, its score studded with nearly-forgotten musical treasures, has... Read more... |
Agrippina, Barbican review - over-the-top comic brillianceSaturday, 01 June 2019
Flirtations and fragile alliances, lies, betrayals, schemes and the ever-present promise of sex – Love Island may be back on our screens next week, but it has nothing on Handel's Agrippina. Imperial Rome is the backdrop for one of the composer’... Read more... |
Semele, Monteverdi Choir, EBS, Gardiner, Alexandra Palace review - Handel's cornucopia lavishly servedFriday, 03 May 2019
Louise Alder, lyric soprano of the moment and vivacity incarnate, had yet to be born when John Eliot Gardiner made his first recording of Handel's Semele with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in 1981. Now they all come together to... Read more... |
Brockes-Passion, AAM, Egarr, Barbican review - fleshly Handel for our earthbound timesSaturday, 20 April 2019
Whips, scourges, sinews, blood and pus: where Bach’s two Passions lament from a contemplative distance, Handel’s plunges right to the bone, to the cruel, tortured death that is the heart of the Easter story.Perhaps that explains the work’s recent... Read more... |
Franco Fagioli, Il Pomo d’Oro, Birmingham Town Hall review - flair and flamboyanceMonday, 08 April 2019
For the final, and only UK, date of his Vinci Arias tour, virtuoso countertenor Franco Fagioli gave an animated and arresting recital of baroque arias at Birmingham Town Hall on Sunday afternoon with the Italian period instrument group Il pomo d’oro... Read more... |
Berenice, Royal Opera/London Handel Festival review - luminous shenanigans in the LinburyThursday, 28 March 2019
It might be the nature of Handel's operatic beasts, but performances tend to fall into two camps: brilliant in the fusion of drama and virtuosity, singing and playing, or boring to various degrees. If this handsome opening gambit in the 2019 London... Read more... |
In the spirit of the composer as innovator: Samir Savant on the London Handel FestivalWednesday, 27 March 2019
This is my third year as festival director of the London Handel Festival, an annual celebration of the life and work of composer George Frideric Handel, which takes place every spring in venues across the capital. Our core charitable and artistic... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Handel, Schmelzer, Tesla QuartetSaturday, 27 October 2018
Abbandonata: Handel Italian Cantatas Carolyn Sampson (soprano), The King’s Consort/Robert King (Vivat)The young Handel’s desire to be an opera composer prompted him to spend the years 1706-1710 in Italy. He was already a superb academician and... Read more... |
The Triumph of Time and Truth, Higginbottom, Kings Place review – time well spent, despite the wordsSaturday, 20 October 2018
You can always depend on Handel to turn verbal dross into musical gold. The chasm between lumbering doggerel and soaring sound can seldom have yawned wider, though, that in several numbers from the third, English version of The Triumph of Time and... Read more... |
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