Comforted From Heaven

For English-speaking audiences who don't mind their Handel sung by sometimes heavily accented non-native speakers, this version of Judas Maccabaeus is hard to beat. Argentinean conductor Leonardo García Alarcón leads the exemplary ensembles Choeur de Chambre de Namur and Les Agrémens in an exceptionally spirited account of the score that effectively erases any taint of its reputation as starchy favorite of amateur Victorian choral societies. His rhythms are crisp and his tempos impetuous, as is appropriate for the martial subject matter, but his phrasing is also gorgeously shapely and the lyrical numbers are rendered with sumptuous sensuality and flexibility. The brilliance of the performance is amplified by the very resonant and richly ample sound quality, which allows the voices, both choral and solos, to be heard to their best advantage, bright yet warm, with a ringing, exhilarating clarity.

The particular strength of the Teldec reissue is its splendid cast, all of whom are technically outstanding, invest their every word with meaning and make recitatives fully alive. The titlerole is in fact one of the smallest, but Tear makes a burly, headstrong king, who handles the scene of the writing on the wall with fine dramatic instinct… Palmer is immensely moving… Esswood, as Daniel, impresses by the beauty of his tone and his command of long phrases; Lehane's brilliantly exuberant ornamentation, apparently improvisatory, marks her as a natural mistress of the style…and van der Bilt shows a rich voice throughout… The Stockholm Chamber Choir is firm-toned and tidy.