Apollo's Fire & Jeannette Sorrell Handel Israel in Egypt, Hwv 54 (2023)

Apollo's Fire's founder and director Jeannette Sorrell is "a masterful musical storyteller" (Seen and Heard). The Maestra and her acclaimed baroque orchestra add to their distinguished AVIE discography that includes Handel's Dixit Dominus and Messiah, with her own adaptation of the composer's oratorio Israel in Egypt.

Although Israel in Egypt was first performed on 4 April 1739 in tripartite form, Handel probably first composed this oratorio without a complete text. Hervé Niquet has chosen to record the version in two parts that Berlioz and the whole of the 19th century considered definitive, these being the Exodus and the Song of Moses. Produced just after the Covid pandemic, this recording also shows the joy of Le Concert Spirituel’s singers and instrumentalists at making music together again: Hervé Niquet says the final chorus "is a cry of happiness in unison" and sees an "almost palpable drama in these works: the two choruses face each other on either side of the orchestra and respond to each other in violent retaliations and monumental unisons. Their interweaving in diabolical movements is like a theatrical staging before our very eyes.”

Great chorus, weak soloists: thank heaven Handel's oratorio Israel in Egypt, like his oratorio Messiah, is more a work for chorus with orchestra and vocal soloists than, like most of his other oratorios, a work for vocal soloists with orchestra and chorus. From a choral point of view, this 2006 recording by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe is indeed superlative. The international chorus sings with surprising unanimity, amazing cohesion, and impressive diction.

Israel in Egypt (HWV 54 ) is without a doubt one of Georg Friedrich Handel’s most captivating oratorios. One that has an unusual role set apart for the choir. The biblical story of Israel’s crossing through the desert to the Promised Land and the plagues God spills over Egypt are sublimely captured in Handel’s score from 1738.

Using some of the finest early-music soloists of the day, Parrott and his forces give posterity a recording that welds tightly focused emotion to a laudable and uncommon feel for the music. The soloists produce appropriately light but well-focused tone and display an ability to negotiate the intricacies of Handel’s notes evenly and with an exceptional grasp of the phrasing required for successful performance. The choral lines are carefully etched and meticulously balanced, resulting in a superlative overall sound that—in spite of the small choir—is rich and capable of exceeding power when required.

Latest release on VIVAT brings Mendelssohn’s astonishing reconstruction of Handel’s great oratorio Israel in Egypt. Mendelssohn’s 1833 Düsseldorf performance has been painstakingly reconstructed from fragments and sources across Europe: the large and colourful orchestra, playing nineteenth-century instruments, produces vivid new sonorities, and the double choir sings magnificently. Listeners familiar with Handel’s 1739 version will also find new numbers, significant changes to the order of movements and very different orchestrations.

Georg Friedrich Händels großes Chor-Oratorium "Israel in Egypt" ist das wertvollste Geschenk, das der Komponist der Chormusik machen konnte: Der Chor fungiert als Protagonist in diesem klangmächtigen Werk, das in bildhafter Dramatik vom alttestamentarischen Exodus erzählt. Viel zu lange war das Oratorium nach seiner wenig erfolgreichen Uraufführung im Londoner King’s Theatre in Vergessenheit geraten, bis es im Zuge der Barock-Renaissance unter Felix Mendelssohn im 19. Jahrhundert wiederentdeckt wurde.