Justice un Love Nicholas Wolterstorff

Composed in Rome in 1707, Clori, Tirsi e Fileno is one of Handel’s longer Italian cantatas and, if not quite matching the brilliance of Apollo e Dafne or Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, it remains a thoroughly engaging piece. Nicholas McGegan’s lively 1990 recording captures the music’s air of beguiling insouciance, Lorraine Hunt is in sweetly majestic voice as the capricious shepherdess Clori and there are deft obbligato flourishes from Elizabeth Blumenstock (violin) and Paul O’Dette (archlute). In sum, a delight.

Essai sur la prise de risque, le fait de répondre de ses actes et de ses choix, de tirer des leçons de l'expérience ou sur la dimension éthique du partage des risques dans les situations imprévisibles. …

Although nowadays Jean-Philippe Rameau is considered the greatest French baroque composer, he only came to real fame when he was already fifty years old. Then, in 1733, his first 'tragédie en musique', Hippolyte et Aricie, was performed in public. This was followed later that decade by Castor et Pollux (1737) and Dardanus (1739) and two 'opéra-ballets', Les Indes galantes (1735) and Les Fêtes d'Hébé (1739). By the 1740s his reputation was such that there was no other composer who could be invited to write the main music to be performed during the festivities at the occasion of the marriage of Dauphin Louis, son of King Louis XV, to Marie-Thérèse of Spain in February 1745. The festivities in Versailles, which lasted a month, started and ended with music by Rameau.

Diana Moore lends her youth and tight vibrato to Rinaldo; a greater vocal presence should come with the experience. Cyndia Sieden is an ideal Almirena, as well as Dominique Labelle in the often poorly served and yet essential role of the magician Armida. Andnew Foster-Williams and Cecile van de Sant excel and carry Argante and Goffredo to a rare level of emotion for one and dramatic consistency for the other. The counter-tenor Chnistophe Dumaux is a perfect Eustazio. Finally, under the lively, dramatic and witty direction of Nicholas McGegan, the Concerto Köln is simply phenomenal.

Originally recorded in 1995 in Prague at the famous Karlin Studios (the former broadcasting hub of the occupying Soviet forces), Food of Love has been out of print for many years. With a stellar line up of Julian Nicholas, Emil Viklický, joined by Robert Balzar and the late Dave Wickins, this remarkable album was laid down in two days. The freshness and spontaneity of the music making was in Julian’s view, due to the fact that he and Dave Wickins were great friends and had already made albums together, and, in Emil they had met a kindred spirit. Food of Love sounds freshly minted, as all great music making does… Play on!