During his years in Italy, Handel absorbed the music of his contemporaries and mastered new stylistic trends. Though the staging of La resurrezione was a memorable event in the Roman musical world, it was the production of Agrippina that marked Handel’s definitive investiture as an operatic composer. It met with enormous success and an unprecedented number of performances followed. Its melodic power is overwhelming and in his creation of credible and vivid characters, the alternation of recitative and arias, and sheer theatrical power, Handel established the template that was to last for the remainder of his operatic career. The production on the present release was filmed in March 2016 at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna, Austria, and was directed by Robert Carsen.
‘Handel: Operatic Arias’, originally released in 2005, saw soprano Emma Bell perform with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, directed from the harpsichord by Richard Egarr, in her second Linn recital disc. + The well-chosen extracts sample the whole of Handel's London operatic career, from his first (Rinaldo, 1711) to his last (Deidamia, 1741), and demonstrate his (and the singer's) wide range of moods, from defiance to resignation, from love to the wilder shores of hatred. + ‘Bell stamps her bold artistic mark on a group of peerless Handel arias. Magnificent stuff. 5 stars.’ (Classic FM)
Music Director Nicholas McGegan leads Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and an acclaimed cast of soloists in this rarely performed masterpiece of Handelian opera. Writing of the live performance of the opera, the New York Times said, “Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, led by Nicholas McGegan, gave a performance of Handel’s ‘Teseo’…that confirmed its leading position in the field.” The cast, led by the glowing soprano Dominique Labelle, as the witch Medea, and the outstanding lyric soprano Amanda Forsythe in the title role is buoyed by the “irrepressible positive energy” (New York Times) of the Orchestra under McGegan’s direction. The performances were recorded live at First Congregational Church, Berkeley, CA on April 13-14, 2013.
Weihnachten mit der Mannheimer Blaserphilharmonie / Ercolino
Coviello
CD
$20.99Jan 18, 2019
The eighty young musicians of the renowned Mannheim Bläserphilharmonie, conducted by Miguel Ercolino, present a very personal Christmas album containing the favorite pieces of the orchestra members from the traditional St. Nicholas concerts. Christmas classics from Bach to Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer conjure up a festive brass Christmas. The Mannheim Bläserphilharmonie is a symphonic wind orchestra whose dedicated musicians have set themselves the task of primarily interpreting contemporary wind music at a high artistic level. With their concerts they are an integral part of the regional cultural scene; on concert tours and at international competitions they appear as culture ambassadors of the music city of Mannheim. In addition, the group awards commissions to selected composers; primarily to those from Mannheim and the region.
Handel: Messiah / Christophers, Handel & Haydn Society
Coro
CD
$16.49$32.99Save 50%Sep 29, 2014
Dramatic, highly-colored music from one of the most approachable and individual voices in contemporary music.
Handel’s ever-popular Messiah was recorded live in the superb acoustic of Boston’s Symphony Hall, to mark the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Handel and Haydn Society, America’s longest-standing performing arts organization. Messiah was first performed in Dublin in 1742 and the Handel and Haydn Society gave the first complete performance of the work in the USA in 1818. It has been performed annually in Boston as part of the Handel and Haydn Society concert season every year since 1854.
REVIEWS:
In his rendering of the score, Harry Christophers eloquently guides us through the entire oratorio with a steady hand and firm conviction. The tempi are sprightly where they ought to be, even sparkling like jewels at times—but not blazing as if on fire—and are equally slackened when they need to be. Further, the text is not merely declaimed; rather, every word is expressed!
The period instrument orchestra plays each and every note, trill, and ornament to perfection. As one would expect, the soloists are likewise fantastic. Soprano Gillian Keith, countertenor Daniel Taylor, tenor Tom Randle, and baritone Sumner Thompson off er impressive virtuoso contributions.
The chorus’s full-bodied yet accurate ensemble singing perked up these ears from the very first pitch of “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed” all the way through “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain” and the mammoth, closing “Amen.”
Corruption? Betrayal? Persecution? Tyranny? These subjects resonate with the current events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They also provide the subject matter of many seventeenth-century musical works. Kate Lindsey has chosen to devote this second Baroque recital with the English ensemble Arcangelo directed by Jonathan Cohen (following Arianna in 2020, ALPHA576) to the figure of Nero. Scarlatti, Handel and Monteverdi wrote works focusing on this tragic protagonist and his entourage, including his mother Agrippina and his wives (Poppaea and Octavia). Interpreted with incredible intensity by the American mezzo-soprano, the programme features world premiere recordings of two cantatas: Alessandro Scarlatti’s La morte di Nerone (c.1690) and Bartolomeo Monari’s La Poppea (1685). Tenor Andrew Staples and soprano Nardus Williams join Kate Lindsey for duets from L’incoronazione di Poppea, including the sensual ‘Pur ti miro’
It was Stefan Zweig who wrote a particularly colorful description of Georg Friedrich Händel’s “Messiah.” In his “Sternstunden der Menschheit” he creates a living story from the spirit of the work, and in the process allows his readers to glance over Händel’s shoulders whilst he is composing. He revealed the timelessness of one of the most impressive compositions in the history of music. In September 2019, the Gaechinger Cantorey orchestra and chorus under their principal conductor and intendant of the International Bachakademie Stuttgart Hans-Christoph Rademann have recorded this epic work of sacred choral music at St. Margaret’s Church in Gotha, Thuringia, together with an excellent quartet of soloists.
Dutch recorder player Erik Bosgraaf is one of a group of Young Turks taking a fresh look at the Baroque recorder repertory, with often spectacular results. Here Bosgraaf turns to Handel’s sonatas for recorder and harpsichord. The keyboard realizations here are unusually vigorous and ornate, and the instrument is almost an equal partner with the recorder. This album represents an excellent imaginative reconstruction of what these sonatas might actually have sounded like in Handel’s time, based on the contexts in which they might have been used.
Il giardino dei sospiri / Kozena, Luks, Collegium 1704
PENTATONE
SACD
$21.99May 03, 2019
On her first Pentatone album, Czech star mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená returns to the baroque repertoire that launched her early career. Il giardino dei sospiri is a collection of scenes from secular cantatas on tragic love, ranging from Handel’s Qual ti riveggio to new editions of works by Leo (Angelica e Medoro), Marcello (Arianna abbandonata) and Gasparini (Atalia). These vocal works are connected through instrumental pieces by Handel (sinfonia of Agrippina), Vinci (sinfonia from Maria dolorata) and Sarro (introduzione from Didone abbandonata). Initially conceived as a scenic project, Il giardino dei sospiri offers a richly-faceted and profoundly moving aural drama. Kožená interprets the tragic heroines of these love stories with fervor, accompanied by Václav Luks and Collegium 1704.
The marvelously affecting Italian Duets have long remained favorites among Handel's oeuvre distinct markers of the influences of the young Saxon's early trips to Rome and studies of the chamber duet master Agostino Steffani. The grand Hamonices Mundi is joined here by rising stars of Baroque singing Gemma Bertagnolli and Susanne Ryden.
Bellini, Donizetti, Handel, Verdi: Opera Arias / Sutherland
Cameo Classics
CD
$20.99Jun 04, 2021
The world-renowned soprano Joan Sutherland left her Sydney home for London in 1952, with the ultimate aim of singing Wagner. Contracted to Covent Garden, she felt her future lay in heavy, dramatic roles; and her early assignments there included Amelia in Verdis Un ballo in maschera and the title role in Aida. Soon her breathtaking agility, crystalline staccatos and unique stratospheric purity became evident not least as Jenifer in Tippetts The Midsummer Marriage, followed swiftly by the doll Olympia in Offenbachs Les contes dHoffmann (both 1955). Although increasingly identified with the bel canto repertoire, until her 1959 Covent Garden triumph in Donizettis Lucia di Lammermoor she kept her options open. The title role in Webers Euryanthe was one of several German, lyric roles added to her repertoire during the mid-1950s, alongside Pamina in Mozarts Die Zauberflöte and Eva in Wagners Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. She was also to remain a staunch Handelian throughout her career, recording the title role in Athalia under Christopher Hogwood (Decca) as late as 1986.
The oratorio Theodora was first performed at the Covent Garden Theatre on 16 March 1750 and clearly took Londoners by surprise. Handel had, after all, made a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn in his choice of subject. The grandiose episodes of the Old Testament, the glorious struggles of Solomon, Saul, or Judas Maccabaeus are no more: the young martyr Theodora leads neither a community nor troops into battle. In a work far removed from the grand spectacle of biblical oratorios, Handel invites us to witness the poignant tale of a personal drama, a drama of the beginnings of Christianity fuelled by conscience, faith, and the heartbreak that they cause.
Leonardo Garcia Alarcon presents and contrasts two monumental works: a Messa Concertata by the choirmaster of the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna and the famous Dixit Dominus composed by George Frideric Handel in Rome in 1707. A fascinating comparison between a first recording of a forgotten masterpiece and a new interpretation of one of the most brilliant works by the young Handel, dazzled as he was by his discovery of the Italian Baroque.
At the borders of mythical Lydia, a crisis erupts: Prince Melo takes up arms against his father, King Halyattes, who has been blinded by the slanders of a deceitful adviser who made him believe he would be disinherited in favor of an usurper. It is in this torn kingdom that Sosarme, sovereign of Media and future husband of Princess Elmira, steps forward as a mediator, determined to calm the fury of blood and restore peace. Drawing on the conventions of opera seria, Handel achieves a subtle balance between the power of Antonio Salvi's text and the richness of the score, building a bridge between the Lullian tradition and the innovations later brought by Rameau. Under the direction of Marco Angioloni, the Orchestre de l'Opéra Royal delivers a Sosarme that is both innovative and filled with vitality and emotion.
Intrecci, New Compositions & Arrangements for Guitar - Giaco
Stradivarius
CD
$16.99Jan 09, 2026
The album Intrecci New compositions and arrangements for Guitar, produced with the support of the MiC Ministry of Culture and SIAE as part of the 'Per Chi Crea' program, presents a singular listening itinerary that sees Giacomo Susani's two souls as an interpreter and composer dialogue in an original way. The program unfolds in four pairs of songs: four original compositions, accompanied by four repertoire arrangements created by Susani himself. "Mine was not an operation of transcription as faithful as possible to the originals - says Giacomo Susani - but I decided to move in an arrangement dimension functional to the narrative arc of the CD and therefore aimed at enhancing the intrinsically identifying qualities of the guitar." The first pair of songs that opens the album sees two works brought together and characterized by a fundamental contrapuntal architecture: a very short Fuga by G.F. Handel, taken from Voluntary X for organ, and the original piece Dialogo (homage to Lauro), born from a commission received by Pixaudio for an upcoming documentary on Antonio Lauro. With a change of interior landscape, we move on to Caprice 4 for solo violin by Pierre Rode, a composer and famous French violinist who lived between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, associated with the piece that gives the album it's title: Intrecci (homage to Paganini) by Susani, a work commissioned by the Paganini Guitar Festival 2024 and which pays homage to Paganini by developing a dialogue between the two gestural worlds, that of the violin and that of the guitar, both loved by the Genoese composer. The third pair of pieces leads into the more abstract dimension of melancholy and meditation, with the very famous June by P.I. Tchaikovsky for piano in the version for guitar created by Giacomo Susani and the original piece by Susani Gems dreaming which the author considers his most abstract work among those on the album. The listening ends with an arrangement of Moon River by Henry Mancini and an original piece in three movements inspired by three paintings by the British author Frederic Leighton. An album that develops in an eclectic meeting of sound worlds and artistic illuminations, where the classical repertoire is singularly intertwined with contemporary expression.
Handel: Salve Regina / Roset, Alarcón, Millennium Orchestra
Ricercar
CD
$20.99Aug 26, 2022
Julie Roset, a young French soprano from Avignon, immediately attracted attention with her first recital for Ricercar (Nun danket alle Gott with Clematis) and went on to record a recital of works by Sigismondo d'India with Mariana Flores that met with great critical acclaim. In this new recording she tackles several of Handel’s masterpieces on religious themes: his Salve Regina, Gloria and the motet Silete venti were all composed at the time when the young Handel had been inspired to new heights by his discovery of Roman musical life.
![Handel, G.F.: Alexander's Feast [Oratorio]](http://arkivmusic.com/cdn/shop/files/1521664.jpg?v=1786726554&width=400)
