Berlin 36

The RIAS-Kammerchor Berlin and its chief conductor Justin Doyle present Handel’s Messiah, together with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and an all-British quartet of outstanding soloists, consisting of Julia Doyle (soprano), Tim Mead (countertenor), Thomas Hobbs (tenor) and Roderick Williams (bass). Messiah (1742) is not only Handel’s most famous work, but equally one of the cornerstones of British choral culture. Over the years, a tradition of mass performances full of pomp and circumstance took root, with the "Hallelujah" as a showstopper. This new period-instruments recording, however, aims to bring the piece back to the size and intimacy of the earliest performances.

Cleverly paired with two symphonies by C.P.E. Bach – written in 1755/56 and 1775/76 respectively – Beethoven’s first two contributions to the symphonic genre reveal the bubbling creativity of a thirty-year-old composer determined to go even further in the renewal of the genre than another, very recent reference, Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’. So much is clear from the very first chord of his Symphony no.1! Relive this decisive moment in the company of the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, under the guidance of their Konzertmeister Bernhard Forck.

This is an excellent spoof/satire of all things American with a side swipe at impoverished European royalty and the operetta genre to boot. Deborah Riedel is absolutely magnificent both in her acting and her singing. Her intentional horribly bad American accent in German is absolutely hilarious and is exactly the way so many Americans speak German although never so completely and swiftly. Yet when she sings, her German, of course, is impeccable and unaccented for, after all, she is an opera singer and will go only so far to dumb down.

The version submitted by Howard Arman for the Bavarian Radio Chorus is based on surviving Mozart sources as well as on Süßmayr's additions; in several places, however, it reaches new conclusions that are implemented with due caution and humble respect for Mozart's magnificent original. Mozart's Requiem is followed by Neukomm's Respond Libera me, Domine - and for musical, liturgical and chronological reasons, the programme begins with Mozart's Vesperae solennes de Confessore KV 339 (1780), composed of psalms from the Old Testament as well as the Magnificat from the Gospel of St Luke and composed for the liturgical festival of a holy confessor.

Jephtha, first performed in 1752, was Handel’s last major work, written while he was struggling with poor health and failing eyesight. Yet the score contains some of his most powerful and moving music, notably the chorus’s bleak paean to blind faith, ‘How dark, O Lord, are Thy decrees!’ Jephtha is also one of his more operatic oratorios and, if many Baroque operas require the suspension of disbelief, this libretto (by Thomas Morell) may need modern listeners to suspend their distaste at the perversities of its 18th-century pietism. Handel’s wonderfully humane music cuts through all such sanctimony, however, as if – as the Handel scholar Winton Dean has argued – in highlighting the themes of personal suffering and capricious fate, Handel implicitly ‘makes Jehovah the villain of the piece’.

Gottfried August Homilius, now considered the greatest cantor of Dresden's Kreuzchor, was, for a while a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. A composer of music for the church, and a great organist, he was described, in 1790, as 'one of the greatest and worthiest organists alive.' While Homilius's name is found on only one score for this passion, stylistic criteria make it almost certain that he wrote this music. This St. Matthew Passion closely resembles Bach's passions - it contains choral movements, recitatives and arias with orchestral accompaniment, and tells the story of the Passion in the same way as was done in churches all over Germany in the 18th century. However, Homilius uses many more short sections with recitative (a total of 89 pieces altogether - most less than one minute long), but his arias are generally much longer than those in Bach's passions and cantatas.

International superstars Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón give inspired performances in Massenet's passionate opera, Manon. Netrebko gives full range to her abilities as a singer and actress in portraying innocence, lust, greed and, above all, beauty. It is Netrebko's mesmerizing performance which makes Villazón's youthful passion and ultimate despair even more authentic and heart-breaking. The setting in this production has been updated to the 1950s and the entire opera takes place as if Manon were the star of her own film. Indeed, Netrebko transforms her character from the innocence of Audrey Hepburn through the voluptuousness of Marilyn Monroe into the tragedy of Ingrid Bergman.