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Saturday 12th November 2011 7:30pm Albert Hall, Nottingham
HANDEL Israel in Egypt
Laurie Ashworth Soprano
ORCHESTRA DA CAMERA
Conductor - Richard Laing STOP PRESS: These three wonderful soloists will also be singing with us in Messiah next year, on 1 December 2012. The bass soloist for that performance will be Simon Thorpe who sang with us for Puccini Messa di Gloria in March 2010.
Review: Handel's oratorio Israel in Egypt is a masterpiece of choral composition, even if its subject - the Old Testament story of the Exodus - may have lost some of its immediate familiarity for today's audience. |
The choir's beautifully rounded sound, powerful, sensitive and always tightly disciplined, was well served by the acoustics of the hall. Particularly impressive throughout was the clarity of diction achieved by such a large choir. Handel's writing abounds in highly visual matching of music and text, and here, too, singers and orchestra excelled. Their evocations of frogs, flies, locusts and hailstones captured the drama of the story, and there was a beautiful, brooding depiction of the 'darkness which might be felt'. This was an elemental world of natural and supernatural powers. Principal soloists Laurie Ashworth (soprano), James Laing (countertenor) and James Geer (tenor) gave first-class performances which had power and lyrical intensity.
end of review
brief notes
Written in 1737, Handel’s portrayal of the story of the escape of the early Israelis from their captivity and slavery in the Egypt of the Pharaohs is full of excitement and ingenious sound-pictures, particularly of the various plagues which beset the land.
A monumental piece for double chorus, Israel in Egypt is ideally suited to a large choral society with a fine sense of drama. It is an unusual piece, giving only small roles to the soloists, and requiring great stamina from the choral forces. The lack of well-defined, character-driven solo roles was one reason that Israel in Egypt failed to find much success in Handel’s lifetime – at this time Italian opera was the most fashionable form of music. In addition, religious texts being performed in secular theatres was anathema to much of the public. These might have been drawbacks in Handel’s time but now Israel in Egypt is second in popularity only to Messiah among Handel’s oratorios.
Programme notes:
There are many informative programme notes on the web.
Link to one quite comprehensive one from a different choir.
Recordings:
There is a plethora of recordings out there, many of them fairly recent and virtually all using period orchestras, usually at baroque pitch. Some of them sound, to my ears, rather anaemic. One which is a little more healthy-sounding (while keeping an authentic baroque style and pitch) is Harry Christophers’ recording with his choir the Sixteen, though he omits most of the solo movements and inserts organ concerto movements between some of the numbers.
On youtube you can hear the traditional big British chorus style of singing the opening choris of the second half:
Moses and the children of Israel
which is a typically red-blooded account from Thomas Beecham. The recording is clearly old and somewhat crackly. I anticipate that our performance will be more like this, only with a little more accuracy and less sliding about from the choir. While ours will not be an ‘authentic’ performance on period instruments, we will strive for a ‘historically-informed’ sound from the orchestra
download a jpg copy of poster image
For printing:
download pdf of poster Portrait
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Children's Tickets for concerts in November and March and for Messiah will be FREE in the 2011-2012 season.
Southwell tickets
Classical CD
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