Argenta

Spanish conductor Ataúlfo Argenta cheated death many times in his short life; during the Spanish Civil War, he talked his way out of execution by a firing squad, contracted typhoid in prison, and survived that in addition to its recurrence later in his life.

The series of recordings of the Abbey of Maulbronn is prolific, and after a very good Messiah, we arrive now Solomon, another oratorio of Haendel. Solomon is a rather fixed work, a single scene, that of the famous judgment, presenting a little bit of "action", but the music, powerful and refined, is the most inspired Handel, and the virtuoso treatment of the choruses reveals a incomparable mastery.

Handel's Apollo e Dafne is a difficult work to put in context. Completed in Hanover in 1710 but possibly begun in Italy, its purpose isn't clear, while, as secular cantatas go, it's long (40 minutes) and ambitiously scored for two soloists and an orchestra of strings, oboes, flute, bassoon and continuo. But this isn't just a chunk of operatic experimentation: it sets its own, faster pace than the leisurely unfolding of a full-length Baroque stage-work, yet its simple Ovidian episode, in which Apollo's pursuit of the nymph Dafne results in her transformation into a tree, is drawn with all the subtlety and skill of the instinctive dramatic genius that Handel was.

Händel’s La Resurrezione is an oratorio for Easter. It was first performed on Easter Sunday 1708 in Rome. The libretto was written by Carlo Sigismondo Capece. The events related in the story are those of the period between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, when Christ ‘descended into Hell’ to redeem the souls of the patriarchs and prophets who had prepared for His coming. The events in the underworld are set out in series of lively exchanges between an Angel and Lucifer. Meanwhile, the story as seen on earth is related through the conversations of three mortal characters, Mary Magdalene, Mary Cleophas and St John the Evangelist. The two planes of the drama are united when the Angel appears to the women at the sepulchre and announces the Resurrection to them.

La Resurrezione, composed in Rome in 1708, was Handel’s first oratorio on a sacred theme. The soloists take the roles of an Angel, Mary Magdalene, Mary Cleophas, St John and Lucifer, who are portrayed in vivid operatic terms with the help of a lavishly-scored orchestra. The distinguished Dutch keyboard-player and conductor Ton Koopman (b.1944) founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra in 1979. The group consists of internationally renowned baroque specialists. Conductor and orchestra are joined here by singers acknowledged as leading specialists in the baroque repertoire.

First revived in the 1970s, Bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka was once touted as the Arcimboldo of music owing to the bizarre twists and turns of his instrumental music, which accounts for only a tiny part of his output. While this was effective marketing and won him a certain avant-garde cachet, the vast majority of Zelenka's music is of the sacred vocal variety, and overall it is probably more useful to view him as a contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach able to pursue professionally what the proudly Lutheran Bach could only do vicariously: compose Catholic service music.