Handel
Classical CDs: Tambourines, multiphonics and hot chocolateSaturday, 02 September 2023
Rachmaninov: Piano Concertos 1-4, Paganini Rhapsody Lukáš Vondráček, Prague Symphony Orchestra/Tomáš Brauner (Supraphon)Yuja Wang, Los Angeles Philharmonic/Gustavo Dudamel (DG)Yet more Rachmaninov, but I’m not complaining, and comparing... Read more... |
Prom 50: Samson, Academy of Ancient Music review - a gradual build in musical and dramatic intensityThursday, 24 August 2023
1743 was the year in which Handel presented both the Messiah and Samson to Londoners – and for most audience members the merits of one clearly eclipsed the other. Fascinatingly it was Samson that was seen to be the more successful – after breaking... Read more... |
Semele, Glyndebourne review - the dark side of desireMonday, 24 July 2023
It never rains but it pours – and hails, snows or, above all, thunders. The presiding tone of Semele, in Adele Thomas’s new production for Glyndebourne, matches the current English summer with its grey skies, glowering clouds and stormy outbursts.... Read more... |
Handel for the King, Le Concert Spirituel, Niquet, Wigmore Hall at St James's Spanish Place review - post-coronation celebrationsWednesday, 07 June 2023
Union Jacks could be stowed away, and EU ones figuratively, furtively flourished: this was a concert of celebratory music for a Hanoverian king by a Saxon composer, by then recently become a British citizen, performed by a French ensemble in a Roman... Read more... |
Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Academy of Ancient Music, Milton Court review - radiant and full of lifeFriday, 12 May 2023
Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno is the opposite of a jukebox musical. So fertile, so overflowing was the 22-year-old Handel’s musical imagination, that his very first oratorio, composed during his time in Rome, would become a chest full of... Read more... |
Arminio, Royal Opera review - Handel does Homeland, and it worksSaturday, 22 April 2023
Invasion by a colonising power has convulsed a country, dividing families – even individuals – between the rival claims of resistance and collaboration. A captured freedom-fighter from the indigenous elite faces execution; an imperial general hopes... Read more... |
Messiah, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, Wigmore Hall review - wonderful, easy, light and dark in perfect poiseTuesday, 04 April 2023
This Palm Sunday served up an epiphany. Previous encounters with Handel's Messiah, in whatever version, and whether listening or performing, turned out to have been through a glass darkly. And here we were face to face with undiluted genius, served... Read more... |
Williams, Dunedin Consort, Truscott, Wigmore Hall review - star soprano, total teamworkFriday, 31 March 2023
When your special guest is a young soprano with all the world before her, the total artist already, your programme might seem to run itself. Yet the Dunedin Consort’s sequence seen and heard in Glasgow, Edinburgh and (last night) London followed a... Read more... |
Theodora, Arcangelo, Cohen, Barbican review - gloriously dark and soberThursday, 30 March 2023
Handel’s Theodora – voluptuously beautiful, warm-to-the-touch music, yoked to a libretto of chilly piety about Christian martyrdom in 4th-century Rome. It’s a red rag to directors, and there’s a relief to seeing the oratorio in the concert hall,... Read more... |
In The Realms of Sorrow, London Handel Festival, Stone Nest review - disappointed love has all the best tunesSaturday, 04 March 2023
Raw, muscular, visceral, haunting – this was Handel as you’ve never experienced him before. In this striking entry for the London Handel Festival, an uncompromising production by Adele Thomas with conductor Laurence Cummings took four of the... Read more... |
First Person: conductor Harry Bicket on filming the complete Handel for The English Concert's big new projectTuesday, 28 February 2023
Of the many questions we asked ourselves during lockdown, I suspect that many of us looked at our lives and professions and asked, “Why?”.Perhaps a period of forced introspection is a positive thing if it helps clarify what is truly important and... Read more... |
Giulio Cesare, English Touring Opera review - a return visit to Handel's EgyptMonday, 27 February 2023
English Touring Opera opened its spring season with Handel's Giulio Cesare – not a new production, but in a new guise. Typically for Baroque opera, the version of the work premiered in 1724 was very long. ETO previously took up the challenge by... Read more... |
