The Whole Music Experience

Classical   Handel/Vivaldi Dixit Dominus   La Nuova Musica David Bates and Lucy Crowe   Harmonia Mundi One of the most popular Christian music settings, Dixit Dominus (music composition for Psalms 109, or 110 in the Protestant Bible), offers baroque era vocalists a workout.  On La Nuova Musica’s recording, Dixit Dominus , conducted by David Bates, the musicians (instrumentalists and vocalists) perform Vivaldi’s third setting of the Psalms 109/110 in D major and Handel’s sober setting in G minor (going against the convention) and sandwiched between those two gems, soprano Lucy Crowe performs the 4 movements of Vivaldi’s In Furore iustissimae irae (my favorite performance on the recording). A relatively young early music choir/orchestra, La Nuova Musica has received critical acclaim and its star rose quickly into the firmament of international early music ensembles.  Certainly, this polished recording offers crystalline vocals, passio...

La Nuova Musica David Bates Handel’s Il Pastor Fido Harmonia Mundi Love is a complicated matter for Italians.  Remember the star-crossed lovers in Romeo and Juliet?  Still, in another era, Italian troubadours roamed from court to court singing about unobtainable love.  During the classical era, Italians fumbled their way through courtship in Mozart's operas.  However, for George Frideric Handel during the Baroque era, nymphs and Greek shepherds endured Cupid’s painful arrows.  Two couples appear at the center of the baroque opera Il Pastor Fido (The Faithful Shepherd) along with an early predecessor of the femme fatale who has her own plans. Amarilli (soprano Lucy Crowe) is in love with Mirtillo (soprano Anna Dennis), but betrothed to Silvio (countertenor Clint van der Linde).  However, Silvio made a vow to Diana, goddess of the hunt and he only has one thing on his mind.  Dorinda (mezzo-soprano Madeleine Shaw), has fallen for Silvio...

Polyphony/Britten Sinfonia/Stephen Layton  George Frideric Handel Messiah Hyperion Records I am not a religious person, but when I listen to Handel’s Messiah , I feel a certain holiness enter the room—the space becomes sacred.  Oddly, a Handel expert told me last year that the baroque composer was not particularly religious.  True he had composed other oratorios with Biblical themes before composing the music for Messiah , but he did recycle material from his secular operas to appear as arias in Messiah .  However, this exalted music with its fiery arias and stunning orchestral interludes, must have given old Handel some pause for religious thought.  The libretto alone tells a powerful story of prophecy, suffering and transcendence, as well as, faith in Divine Providence. Handel reworked the oratorio several times, adding arias for soloist and most notably for the castrato Gaetano Guadagni, in 1750.  The original performance of Messiah to...

Angela Hewitt Plays Handel & Haydn Hyperion Records In the past I have listened to award-winning Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt’s Bach recordings, which I found as delicious as the Bach interpretations of the late Glenn Gould (also Canadian). So when I put the Handel & Haydn CD into my player, I thought I was listening to Bach. I even pulled the CD out of my computer to make sure that Hyperion had not made a mistake and accidentally put a Bach recording in the jewel case. They had not. I read Hewitt’s liner notes in which she discussed the similarities between George Frideric Handel’s Suite No 2 in F major and Bach’s repertoire. “If you play this for somebody without telling them who wrote it, I bet the last person they would name would be Handel. Many would say Bach.” I would say the same about Chaconne (with 21 variations) in G major , which Hewitt opens the recording. But why should any of this surprise me? Handel and Bach were contemporaries, both of Germanic ...