This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

Handel’s oratorio Saul is taken from the First Book of Samuel, and focuses on the first king of Israel’s relationship with David, his eventual successor, which eventually leads to his demise. The three act work with libretto by Charles Jennens premiered in January 1739, and was an immediate success. This production directed by Barrie Kosky was recorded live at Glyndebourne Opera House, Lewes, October 2015. It was ranked by The Independent amongst five top opera and classical performances of 2015. “Musically this evening is well-nigh flawless.” (The Independent) “A theatrical and musical feast of energetic choruses, surreal choreography and gorgeous singing.” (The Guardian)

Subtitles: English, French, German, Korean
Sound Formats: 2.0 LPCM, 5.1 (5.0) DTS
Running Time 185 mins
Region Code: 0 (All)

Handel’s oratorio Saul is taken from the First Book of Samuel, and focuses on the first king of Israel’s relationship with David, his eventual successor, which eventually leads to his demise. The three act work with libretto by Charles Jennens premiered in January 1739, and was an immediate success. This production directed by Barrie Kosky was recorded live at Glyndebourne Opera House, Lewes, October 2015. It was ranked by The Independent amongst five top opera and classical performances of 2015. “Musically this evening is well-nigh flawless.” (The Independent) “A theatrical and musical feast of energetic choruses, surreal choreography and gorgeous singing.” (The Guardian)

Subtitles: English, French, German, Korean
Sound Formats: 2.0LPCM, 5.1(5.0) DTS
Running Time: 185 mins
Region Code: 0 (All)

HANDEL Saul • Harry Christophers, cond; Christopher Purves (Saul); Sarah Connolly (David); Robert Murray (Jonathan) • CORO COR16103 (3 CDs: 162:39)

A number of decisions await the prospective purchaser of Saul. Leaving to one side for the moment the question of period instruments, perhaps the most interesting decision concerns the voice type for the role of David. In this disc Harry Christophers cites the scholarship of Anthony Hicks, who was convinced that the role was intended for Maria Antonia Marchesini, who had already sung successfully for Handel in Faramondo and Serse. It is her name, we are told, which is written in the autograph, notably alongside David’s “O fatal day.” But we also know that she didn’t sing at the premiere and a replacement, a man called Russell, was employed for the task. Whether or not he was a countertenor or a singing actor, and whether or not he did sing it transposed down, as suggested, we shall presumably never know. So, to some extent your choice for a set of Saul will depend on whether (or not) it matters to you if David is sung by a soprano, as here (Sarah Connolly) or by such as Andreas Scholl (for Paul McCreesh), Lawrence Zazzo for René Jacobs, or, further back, James Bowman for Charles Mackerras. Decisions will also relate to the orchestral fabric of the performance. From the start of this recording one can hear some luminaries of the period movement. Two of the most prominent and, indeed, audible are violinist and leader Walter Reiter and the first oboist Anthony Robson. They and their confreres in the orchestra provide bracing, sensitive, color-conscious contributions of the highest class. Notable amongst such moments is the beautiful harp playing of Frances Kelly in the Symphony at the heart of act I scene 6. In the triumphant and celebratory moments the band’s trumpeters offer punchy, rounded tone.

Harry Christophers takes excellent tempos, neither rushing his forces, nor lingering too elastically: His is a central reading, avoiding dogmatism and excess, remaining grounded in practicality and intelligibility. The music generates tension by virtue of its incremental unfolding of plot and theme, and Christophers serves it well. The central roles are those of David and Saul himself. Sarah Connolly is an outstanding David. Her “O Lord, whose mercies numberless” is a masterly example of legato expressiveness, and each of her recitatives is paced with a proper concern for textual significance. Christopher Purves’s Saul is packed with theatrical menace. He sings with frightening power, and connives with malicious spite. The trajectory of his rise and fall is plotted with quasi-Shakespearean relish, and he responds with the kind of venomous characterization that raises his stature still further. His voice is not as intrinsically attractive as that of, say, Donald McIntyre for Mackerras, but Purves make you believe him every inch the deranged king. I was fortunate enough to be at the Barbican in London when these forces performed Saul and I remember very clearly Sarah Connolly looking across at Purves—they were quite widely spaced on stage—with a thin, approving smile as he raged away.

The other parts are all characterfully taken. It’s difficult to make too much of the role of Jonathan but Robert Murray sings with straightforward nobility, and he’s clearly an astute musician. It’s important that the roles of the sisters Merab and Michal are sufficiently differentiated. Elizabeth Atherton takes the former, and Joélle Harvey the latter, and I would say that there is just enough to grant them a sense of independent characterization, though both come under just a touch of vocal pressure occasionally. Mark Dobell, the High Priest, is a member of The Sixteen, here expanded to 18, as is Jeremy Budd who sings the role of the Witch of Endor and does so, moreover, without any spurious effects, which is all to the good. The Sixteen sings superbly in the choruses, fluidly negotiating the counterpoint, withdrawing tone, when required, or belting it out—but retaining clarity—in the affirmatory choruses.

The recording was made in St. Augustine’s Church Kilburn, London, and is first-class in every respect. The booklet is sensibly laid out and the text is in good font size. I mentioned period-instrument performances earlier, and I would say that this recording is now the most recommendable of them all. It is more centrally recommendable than Harnoncourt (with Fischer-Dieskau, no less) and McCreesh (despite Scholl) because it lacks their occasional idiosyncrasies. The singing here is more incisive and memorable than the Jacobs on Harmonia Mundi. Purves, in particular, sings more vividly than Alastair Miles for John Eliot Gardiner on Philips. Each of the recordings of Saul, actually, has many things going for it—I harbor a strong affection for Mackerras—and my list isn’t exhaustive: There’s the old Mogens Wöldike LP set on Vanguard to remember too, with Helen Watts, and the much more recent Philip Ledger on EMI, amongst others. Still, if you’re looking for a new, period performance you won’t go wrong with this set.

FANFARE: Jonathan Woolf

A good modern recording of Samson is overdue. It is extraordinary that this fine work, composed within weeks of Messiah, and in Handel’s day possibly the most popular of all his oratorios, should be represented on the Gramophone Database only by one version recorded nearly 20 years ago and the unidiomatic and heavily cut Harnoncourt recording made in 1992. The new one does not obliterate memories of the old, which captures performances by a generation of British Handel interpreters at their finest (Dame Janet Baker, Helen Watts, Robert Tear, Benjamin Luxon and John Shirley-Quirk, as well as several admirable younger singers). But the new version gives a complete and straightforward account of the work, in tune with styles of Handel performance favoured today. Except in one particular: most conductors of period-instrument groups tend to favour faster tempos than those Harry Christophers generally chooses. This is a decidedly leisurely reading of the work; clearly Christophers has a sense of its magnitude, of the big issues with which it is involved and the nobility of its utterance, and he will not let himself be hurried. I think there are times, especially in the final act, where quicker tempos would have been helpful towards the maintenance of the oratorio’s momentum. Similarly, I wish that he had moved a shade more swiftly during the recitatives, and – or this may be the editors – from one number to the next, simply to sustain the dramatic impetus more strongly. I suspect, however, that Christophers is probably less concerned with the drama of the work than with its religious and philosophical aspects, and of course with presenting a direct and faithful realization of it: a perfectly legitimate approach and one that I am sure many will applaud.

He has an excellent cast. Thomas Randle is well equipped for Samson, a firm, strong tenor, with a hint of baritonal quality in his middle and lower registers. There is no bombast here. “Total eclipse” has much of pathos but no heroics. “Why does the God of Israel sleep” is done with some power, and the renunciation of Dalila (“Your charms to ruin”) is weightily sung; and there is plenty of fire in his rejection of the Philistine braggart Harapha but never at the cost of musical singing. It is not strongly characterized: an estimable performance but one that does not quite catch you by the throat. Samson’s father Manoah is sung with characteristic warmth and depth of tone and feeling by Michael George: listen for example to his “Thy glorious deeds” in Act 1. His bass contrasts aptly with the tauter, more focused one of Jonathan Best’s Harapha. Mark Padmore contributes some well-placed singing as both the Israelite and the Philistine man. Lynne Dawson does the same as the woman from both camps (and also the Virgin, echoing Dalila in one appealing number); she contributes a vigorous “Let the bright seraphim” (which here has a brief choral section at the end, surviving in Handel’s manuscript but probably never heard before). I enjoyed Lynda Russell’s soft, seductive Dalila, a modest role, confined to Act 2; but perhaps above all Catherine Wyn-Rogers excels as Micah, with beautifully intense singing and concentrated tone in all her music – her phrasing in “Then long eternity” and the heartfelt expression in “Return O God of hosts”, for example, are quite outstanding. Stylistically the performance is cautious, with only modest added ornamentation and brief cadenzas, but of course the requisite appoggiaturas in the recitative: if an error, it’s certainly in the right direction.

The Sixteen provide clear and spirited choral singing throughout, suitably jolly in the Philistine music, duly noble in that for the Hebrews. I was struck by the unusual clarity of texture in the choruses, attributable both to Christophers’s direction and insistence on firm tone and incisive articulation and to the work of the engineers. Altogether a welcome issue.'

Stanley Sadie, Gramophone [8/1997] Reviewing Collins Classics 7038

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Carus is building a valuable stable of recordings, many taped in the Frauenkirche in Dresden. For this three CD set the NDR Choir, Festspiel Orchester Göttingen, a sextet of solo singers and Nicholas McGegan have been enlisted to render Samson to the disc-buying public. The result, if I can anticipate my own critical comments, is an equable and well, but small scaled, performance. There are no outstanding singers as such; instead ensemble virtues are promoted in pursuance of a harmonious and expressively equable reading of the score.

One of the most striking things about the set is the excellent diction and spirited incision of the NDR Chorus. The relatively new Festspiel Orchester Göttingen employs period instruments and, as with almost all bands promoted by Carus that I have encountered, are a most adept, rhythmically buoyant and sympathetic one. McGegan directs with style and if one sometimes feels him a little lacking in brio - I tend to feel the same way about his compatriot Robert King in this sort of repertoire - then compensation comes in the shape of his long-term control and of the rise and fall of the work's emotive high ground. Recitative is notably well judged, accompanied recitative especially, where the band points finely, and these are the result of McGegan's acumen.

But Samson is about the voice and here we have some matters to ponder. The singers have been well selected to ensure that warmth and a certain limited expressive range is harmoniously maintained - which is not to say there aren't some outbursts, of which more in a moment. It is all too easy, when this work is staged or semi-staged, as it has been, to allow Samson's gravitational pull to splinter ensemble focus. I saw John Vickers's last performances on a London stage, when he sang Samson, and though this wasn't quite the case here, it was obvious where all eyes and ears were directed. In this Carus things are, for want of a better phrase, democratically apportioned.

Franziska Gottwald is a sonorous but not over inflated Micah - she sings with equalized tone and requisite plangency, as well as fine English diction. It's a voice that can take on a pleasing keen, as in her Act II aria with chorus Return Oh God of Hosts. Thomas Cooley is Samson; he sings with pleasing, neatly controlled eloquence but it's rather small-scaled and arguably a bit neutral, something I felt about his Total Eclipse! which should be more starkly and incontrovertibly conveyed. William Berger has a warm, rounded bass and does well throughout; his recitative control is evident as early as Act I's Oh miserable change! where the band accompanies with spirited interjectory drama. His How willing my paternal love is sensitively graded, modest but not especially expressive. Sophie Daneman sings a pretty but perhaps subdued Let the Bright Seraphim but otherwise gives a controlled, pleasing account. Bass Wolf Matthias Friedrich sports some well nourished but incongruously employed open American vowels, not least in Honour and Arms which gets rather a 'windy' reading.

Who sings the Virgin in Act II, to shadow Daneman? I assume it's a member of the choir but she should be credited, especially as she's good.

The Raymond Leppard directed modern instrument performance is still going strong, and with Janet Baker, Helen Watts, Robert Tear, John Shirley-Quirk and Benjamin Luxon you're assured of first class singing of a certain stamp [Warner Classics 6 CDs 2564695686 - a box set with Messiah and assorted arias]. Harnoncourt [Teldec 2564692602] has pressing claims as does the old Richter with Alexander Young et al [Archiv 453 245 2]. Harry Christophers' 1996 recording with Lynne Dawson, Lynda Russell, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Mark Padmore, Matthew Vine, Thomas Randle, Jonathan Best and Michael George is ex-Collins and now on Coro 16008 and is the major opposition. I prefer the Christophers. 

Recorded over two days this is an SACD and sounds a touch reverberant in the tricky acoustic of the Frauenkirche. There are some small cuts, for example To Song and Dance. Whilst admiring the overall, equable nature of the performance, the Christophers gets a more urgent recommendation.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Also available on Blu-ray

George Frideric Handel
RINALDO

Skin-tight rubber and lacrosse sticks bring contemporary chic to this timeless fantasy of warriors and witches in Robert Carsen’s fun-filled transformation of Handel’s first London triumph. Conducting from the keyboard just as Handel himself did, Ottavio Dantone leads a youthful cast of today’s luminaries in the dramatic art of Baroque opera, the ‘affecting’ Sonia Prina, the ‘unadorned intensity’ of Anett Fritsch and ‘fire-breathing flair’ (The Observer) of Brenda Rae.

Rinaldo – Sonia Prina
Goffredo – Varduhi Abrahamyan
Eustazio – Tim Mead
Almirena – Anett Fritsch
Armida – Brenda Rae
Argante – Luca Pisaroni
A Christian Magician – William Towers

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Ottavio Dantone, conductor

Robert Carsen, stage director

R E V I E W:



HANDEL Rinaldo • Ottavio Dantone, cond; Sonia Prina ( Rinaldo ); Anett Fritsch ( Almirena ); Luca Pisaroni ( Argante ); Brenda Rae ( Armida ); Varduhi Abrahamyan ( Goffredo ); Tim Mead ( Eustazio ); William Towers ( Christian Magus ); O of the Age of Enlightenment • OPUS ARTE OA 1081 D (1 DVD: 190:00 opera, 24:00 bonus; Blu-ray OA BD7107 D) Live: Glyndebourne 2011


When we think of the Crusades, our romantic imaginations go to mounted knights in armor with white crosses on their breastplates on mighty chargers doing battle with mounted and turbaned Saracens on sleek Arabian steeds with flowing robes and scimitars flashing in the sun. In point of fact, most of the battles during the First Crusade were sieges, with one side hunkered down inside a fortress or walled city, which was certainly the case during the battle for Jerusalem, as depicted in George Frideric Handel’s Rinaldo . Handel’s librettist, Giacomo Rossi, ignores all of that, his stage instructions call for the Saracens to file out of the town like chickens to be plucked and form up across from the waiting Crusaders (who would have combatants on foot and a contingent of archers as well as the mounted knights). Then the two sides are to engage in actual battle with first one side surging to the fore and then the other. The difficulty of staging such a military spectacle, along with some of the magic effects of sorceress Armida, are often cited as reasons to either change the story or not give the opera at all.


In this Glyndebourne production from 2011 the epic battle takes place on a soccer pitch at a British boys’ school between boys in school uniforms and breastplates and some rather sluttily dressed schoolgirls. Many of the magic effects occur in the school chemistry lab, with the fizzes and bangs and colorful explosions of a lab assignment gone very bad. Other scenes take place in a classroom, a hallway with school lockers and the bicycle barn. Armida’s torture chamber is the school gymnasium. The whole story of Rinaldo here becomes a young bullied schoolboy’s romantic fantasy of gaining revenge on the school bullies and the mean teachers who punish him. Of course the schoolboy is Rinaldo, mighty Christian warrior, his young girlfriend Almirena, Rinaldo’s intended, and his classmates the knights of the Crusader army, with Goffredo, their leader and his brother Eustazio two of the principals. The mean teachers become the Saracen leader Argante and his girlfriend, the sorceress Armida who wears a kinky rubber outfit. The sluttily dressed schoolgirls double as Armida’s Furies. The story is played in earnest, not tongue-in-cheek and manages to hang together and be quite entertaining. There are a few whimsical bits that draw audience laughter; at the end of act I Rinaldo goes airborne and flies across the face of the full moon on his bicycle. (I think I was on that ride in Orlando once.) I am informed the slutty schoolgirls are actually modeled on the students of St. Trinian’s in popular movies from the ’60s I must have missed. Thankfully, Stage Director Robert Carsen gives us no trace of Harry Potter.


As might be expected from Glyndebourne, the musical side of things is first-rate. The classy period ensemble, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, is led here impeccably by the up and coming young Italian maestro Ottavio Dantone. All of the singers are very good, starting with contralto Sonia Prina as Rinaldo. Prina is a bit small and short to look like a heroic warrior but she fits a British schoolboy much better and sings the music very well. Handel wrote three roles for castrato, Rinaldo, Goffredo, and his brother Eustazio. Here, Goffredo is sung by mezzo Varduhi Abrahamyan and Eustazio by countertenor Tim Mead, both in fine voice, though Goffredo must sing a lot of music and Abrahamyan seems to tire a bit in the last act. The enemy forces provide some of the best music in Rinaldo and here coloratura soprano Brenda Rae as Armida scores a triumph in some of Handel’s most difficult and spectacular music. Rae is able to portray both the alluring seductress of Rinaldo and the angry twice-rejected sorceress with equal skill and believability. Luca Pisaroni brings his fine bass-baritone voice to bear on the role of the Saracen leader, Argante, and produces some highlights of his own. Soprano Anett Fritsch gives us a very well sung “Lascia ch’io pianga” as Almirena, but I can never get Cecilia Bartoli’s version on Decca out of my head. Five arias are cut from the 1711 score to allow the Glyndebourne patrons time to catch the last train back to London.


There is another production of Rinaldo on DVD, from Munich, with Harry Bicket conducting the Bavarian State forces and featuring countertenor David Daniels in the title role, with two other countertenors, David Walker and Axel Kohler in Handel’s two other castrato roles. The Munich version is played more as Euro farce with many directorial oddities prevailing. The setting is modernized to the present with much of the first act taking place in a seedy hotel lobby with cheap orange furniture. Goffredo is apparently a sleazy evangelist preacher trying to enlist heroic Rinaldo to do God’s work, his brother Eustazio the PR man and business manager who counts the take from the collection plates. During one aria a giant bobble-head doll wanders out, drops his pants, then turns around and moons the audience, which sets the prevailing tone of this production. It certainly distracts our attention from the implied inanity of the original story. This set is also very well sung.


The theory that the story of Rinaldo cannot be successfully produced in its original guise to the satisfaction of modern viewers has been lately disproved by the Metropolitan Opera’s tasteful and very enjoyable staging of the Rossini version of the same story ( Armida ). Neither the Glyndebourne nor the Munich sets are completely satisfactory in that regard, some of the grand glory and romance of Handel’s heroic melodrama leaks out like a flat tire when the work is updated and farcical elements inserted. You are left with several good tunes and in this Opus Arte set, a rather cute story. I like this one the better of the two, and it comes in razor sharp Blu-ray video and hi-def surround sound. Recommended.


FANFARE: Bill White    

Recorded live at Glyndebourne Opera House, Lewes, August 2011

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: LPCM 2.0 / DTS 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, French, German
Running time: 190 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology.

Classical Music

Elsewhere in this issue, in choosing the records of the year, I have singled Out the new version of Handel's opera Admeto for its broadly successful attempt at a true Handelian style. Well, those words were no sooner in the post to the Editor than I heard this new set, which considerably surpasses it in almost all regards: indeed this seems to me comfortably the best Handel opera recording I have heard. It is an easier opera to perform than the heroic ones of the 1720s (at least, to perform on records; perhaps it is not so easy on the stage— though I remember with pleasure its only English revival, at Abingdon in 1961). Partenope was written in 1730, for the first season of what was called the 'new Academy', run by Handel himself and his manager, after the collapse and the discrediting of the Royal Academy, of which Handel had been salaried musical director and which had organized opera in London since 1720. Handel now had a new team of singers, and the operas he wrote for them show distinctly the influence of the works he encountered during his talent-spotting trip to Italy. Partenope does so in particular. It is to a libretto by Silvio Stampiglia, markedly influenced by the vein of ironic humour popular in Venetian opera. The plot concerns the founding queen of Naples, Parthenope, and her various suitors, one of whom (Arsaces) deserted his betrothed (Rosmira) to woo her, and is pursued by Rosmira who in male clothes is herself masquerading as an admirer of Parthenope. The musical idiom beautifully catches the vivacity, the ironic wit, the gentle ardour and the charm that distinguish the plot. The musical textures are for the most part light and airy; there is more of rapid music than in most of Handel's operas; the phrase structure is simpler; and the vocal colour is different from usual—dictated, to be sure, by the particular cast Handel had at his disposal, yet characteristically he turned to positive ends the fact that he had only one soprano (Parthenope), one tenor, one baritone and all the rest altos of one kind or another. The orchestral texture, more often than usual, consists of just a violin line and continuo: the occasional more fully-scored aria, like Emilius's in Act I with its rich semi-contrapuntal string writing, or Rosmira's brilliant hunting aria with oboes and horns to end the act, accordingly makes a striking effect—and none more so than Arsaces's G minor lament, with muted violins, moaning flutes, theorbo and pizzicato basses, near the end of the opera. There are several ensemble numbers, including a trio and a quartet, but as the characters rarely sing simultaneously this does not make a geat deal of difference.

In Adnseto I questioned the wisdom of using so small an orchestra. Here the orchestra is much the same size, but it is about right since the music is so much less heroic in temper. It would perhaps be cynical to suggest that Handel, now he had to pay the bills himself, wrote music that worked well with fewer players; but with Partenope it could be not far from the truth. The group here p1a(s superbly: there is a dash and a sparkle to the string playing that makes the rapid passage work a real joy to listen to; the bass is firm and shapely; the wind playing is on the whole very well tuned; and the continuo playing provides sensible and unobtrusive support. Above all, the direction has the kind of rhythmic breadth and sense of purpose that I had despaired of meeting in an 'authentic' performance. Too often Handel's stature is diminished, the grandeur of his designs whittled down, by short-breathed and finicky phrasing. Here, in authentic timbres, Handel emerges as the giant he always did under the Woods and the Sargents, but without any over-inflation. This is greatly to the credit of the musicianship of Sigiswald Kuijken and his players. His orchestra has strings numbering 5.5.2.3.2, with four oboes and two bassoons, and pairs of flutes and horns and a trumpet as needed.

As for the singing, there are two names new to me of which I shall hope to hear very much more. One is the Parthenope, Krisztina Laki, a fluent and agile soprano with a happy glitter to her voice. She copes comfortably with the difficult divisions, and brings a suitably light expressive touch to the slower arias; altogether an accomplished and promising performance and an intelligent interpretation. Even more striking, perhaps, is the Rosmira of Helga Muller Molinari—plumb in her intonation (more so than anyone else in the cast), and capable of infusing her passage work with genuine vigour and passion. The angry C minor aria in the Second Act is magnificent, a real musical explosion of wrath; but the love music too is finely done. The timbre itself is not extraordinary, but the voice is perfectly focused and controlled. With the Arsaces (and this is the biggest part, composed for the famous castrato Bernacchi) I am less happy; as in Admeto, René Jacobs swoops and swoons too much, in a mannered way, and is not dependable over pitch. John York Skinner gives a capable account of the role of Armindus, Parthenope's ultimately successful lover, best in the direct style of his Act III aria than in the more expressive earlier ones. Martyn Hill as Emilius is firm and clear in the tenor arias, and accurate and expressive too; and Stephen Varcoe does his single aria in a pleasantly clean and light manner, without any booming or ranting.

Handelians may object, with some justification, that there is insufficient ornamentation in this set. That is true. Here and there a cadence crying for a trill is . . . well, left crying; and even the da caps sections of the arias are mostly sung without elaboration, which we know is contrary to Handel's expectation. Still, it is far better to do nothing than to do something wrongly or tastelessly, and that is particularly true in recordings, where one does not want to hear the same piece of bad decoration every time. Jacobs decorates a little, and some of the others do, too, very modestly. I wish a little more effort had been made over achieving a performing style a little more accurate and historical in this respect. On the other hand, I have nothing but praise for the execution of the recitatives, which (given in a form more complete than in the Handel-Gesellschaft score) move along quickly and conversationally, with the cadences correctly elided, while losing nothing of their dramatic force or their meaning from these excellent, and obviously well coached, singers. Altogether this set can be warmly recommended to lovers of Handel operas—and indeed to others too, who might find themselves drawn to become lovers of these masterpieces.

-- S.S., Gramophone [12/1979] Reviewing original LP

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

"The performances of these concertos share the same characteristics of Volumes 1-3: bravura playing, clean melodic lines, especially in the solo parts, and discrete, elegant phrasing. In keeping the textures light, Handel created works of great charm and instant appeal. These recordings capture their best qualities."

---Dr. Phil Muse, Classik Reviews (April 2004)

"These are really chamber works rather than bigtime symphonic organ concertos, but nevertheless the multichannel option sorts out the subtle interplay of organ lines from the chamber orchestra with a clarity no two-channel version can equal, even in SACD."

---John Sunier, Audiophile Audition (Juli/August 2004)

"Schröder's warm-toned period orchestra provides muscular but never overbearing accompaniment, its strongly marked rhythms supporting and energizing Chorzempa's somewhat smoother (but never, ever lazy) solo work. I narrowly prefer these performances to the fine Preston/Pinnock set on Archiv. This is the set to get."

---James Reel, Fanfare

"The multichannel option sorts out the subtle interplay of organ lines from the chamber orchestra with a clarity no two-channel version can equal, even in SACD.

---John Sunier, Audiophile Audition

This selection is a Hybrid Multichannel Super Audio CD. The Stereo Hybrid
SACD program can be played on any standard compact disc player. The DSD
Surround and Stereo programs require an SACD player for playback.

HANDEL: Ode for St. Cecilia's Day

REVIEW:

Thankfully, as presented here by the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, this is no one-to-a-part, minimalist realization. I should probably have mentioned well before getting this far into the review that this recording, originally released on Sony Classical, was made at a time, 1997, when period-instrument ensembles still had more than four or five players on their payrolls. Thus, the performance here includes 11 violins, three violas, three cellos, two double basses, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, timpani, and harpsichord continuo. So, for all intents and purposes, the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra sounds like a modern-instrument ensemble, which, from my perspective, is a good thing.

This is a wonderful disc, and not just for Handel lovers. The music is invigorating, splendidly performed, and exceptionally well recorded. I recommend it to everyone.

— Fanfare

"...one would have to be extremely inflexible not to find Mozart's tinkering fascinating on its own terms. Those terms include a German text, a version of "The Trumpet Shall Sound" that features the French horn, a quartet setting of "And He Shall Purify" and the deletion of a few arias and choruses.

But Mozart's wind and brass additions -- in the Sinfonia, "All We Like Sheep" and "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth," for example -- give his version a wonderful, distinct character. Mozart's voice hardly drowns out Handel's, but his commentary makes for an enlivening alternative to the standard "Messiah." Helmuth Rilling's lively, warm-toned reading is both inviting and persuasive." - Alan Kozinn, New York Times