The biblical account of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt is the defining event of Jewish history. By contrast, Handel’s oratorio Israel in Egypt has struggled to find its ‘identity’, hampered as it is by what might be termed the ‘Part 1 conundrum’, and the oratorio has not – despite its repute and the scholarly respect bestowed upon it – consistently or fully satisfied audiences, historic or modern.
Category: Reviews
Measha Brueggergosman: The Art of Song – Ravel to John Cage
A rather charming story recently appeared in the USA of a nine-year old boy who, at a concert given by Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, let out a very audible “wow” at the end of Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music. I mention this only because music – whether you are neurotypical or not – leads to people, of any age, expressing themselves in concerts relative to the extraordinary power of the music they hear. Measha Brueggergosman’s recital very much had the “wow” factor, and on many distinct levels.
World premiere of Cecilia McDowall’s Da Vinci Requiem
The quincentennial of the death Leonardo da Vinci is one of the major events this year – though it doesn’t noticeably seem to be acknowledged in new music being written for this.
Mahler: Titan, Eine Tondichtung in Symphonieform – FranÁois-Xavier Roth, Les SiËcles
Not the familiar version of Mahler’s Symphony no 1, but the “real” Mahler Titan at last, as it might have sounded in Mahler’s time! FranÁois-Xavier Roth and Les SiËcles present the symphony in its second version, based on the Hamburg/Weimar performances of 1893-94. This score is edited by Reinhold Kubik and Stephen E.Hefling for Universal Edition AG. Wien.
Aribert Reimann’s opera Lear at Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
In 1982, while studying in Germany, I had the good fortune to see Aribert Reimann’s opera Lear sung in M¸nchen by the original cast, which included Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, J˙lia V·rady and Helga Dernesch. A few years later, I heard it again in San Francisco, with Thomas Stewart in the title role. Despite the luxury casting, the harshly atonal music—filled with quarter-tones, long note rows, and thick chords—utterly baffled my twenty-something self.
Berlioz’s Requiem at the Concertgebouw – earthshakingly stupendous
It was high time the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra programmed Hector Berlioz’s Grande Messe des morts. They hadn’t performed it since 1989, and what better year to take it up again than in 2019, the 150th anniversary of Berlioz’s death?
Matthew Rose and Friends at Temple Church
I was very much looking forward to this concert at Temple Church, curated by bass Matthew Rose and designed to celebrate music for voice commissioned by the Michael Cuddigan Trust, not least because it offered the opportunity to listen again to compositions heard recently – some for the first time – in different settings, and to experience works discussed coming to fruition in performance.
Handel’s Athalia: London Handel Festival
There seems little to connect the aesthetics of French neoclassical theatre of the late-seventeenth century and English oratorio of the early-eighteenth. But, in the early 1730s Handel produced several compositions based on Racine’s plays, chief among them his Israelite-oratorios, Esther (1732) and Athalia (1733).
Verdi: Messa da Requiem – Staatskapelle Dresden, Christian Thielemann (Profil)
It has often been the case that the destruction wrought by wars, especially the Second World War, has been treated unevenly by composers. Theodor Adorno’s often quoted remark, from his essay Prisms, that “to write poetry after Auschwitz would be barbaric” – if widely misinterpreted – is limited by its scope and in a somewhat profound way composers have looked on the events of World War II in the same way.
Ravel’s L’heure espagnole: London Symphony Orchestra conducted by FranÁois-Xavier Roth
Although this concert was devoted to a single composer, Ravel, I was initially a little surprised by how it had been programmed. Thematically, all the works had the essence of Spain running through them – but chronologically they didn’t logically follow on from each other.