The Son S 02

Some albums exist outside of time or place, gently floating on their own style and sensibility. Of those, the La’s lone album may be the most beguiling, a record that consciously calls upon the hooks and harmonies of 1964 without seeming fussily retro, a trick that anticipated the cheerful classicism of the Brit-pop ’90s. But where their sons Oasis and Blur were all too eager to carry the torch of the past, Lee Mavers and the La’s exist outside of time, suggesting the ’60s in their simple, tuneful, acoustic-driven arrangements but seeming modern in their open, spacy approach, sometimes as ethereal as anything coming out of the 4AD stable but brought down to earth by their lean, no-nonsense attack, almost as sinewy as any unaffected British Invasion band.

This CD is a total revelation. Some of the songs are arranged so brilliantly that they actually surpass the original version. "Help!" for example and "A Hard Day's Night", which becomes a groovy jazz number. "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" sounds like a medieval singing while "Can't Buy me Love" is a fully-fledged madrigal. The singing is absolutely blindingly brilliant. This album is never less than good and a good two-thirds of it is excellent or totally revelatory.
Comprising an ever-changing cast of six members - two countertenors, a tenor, a bass, and two baritones - The King's Singers are a long-running British vocal ensemble that tours the world singing a variety of repertory. Since their inception in the '60s and into the new millennium, the group has continued to perform, frequently to sold-out audiences.

Hyperion’s Record of the Month sees the long overdue return to the studio of The King’s Consort, under the baton of the group’s newly appointed Artistic Director Matthew Halls. Here the ensemble presents the premiere recording of Handel’s Parnasso in Festa: a unique example in Handel’s enormous creative career of a fully-fledged celebratory serenata (or Festa teatrale). This form was rare in England but had developed in parallel with opera in Italy, where it was popular for commemorating special occasions of international significance. Parnasso in Festa was written for Princess Anne’s marriage to Prince William of Orange.

Handel’s Ottone was one of the most popular operas of the composer’s career, with 34 known performances during his lifetime, beaten only by the 53 performances of Rinaldo. The premiere run in 1723 featured superstar Italian soloists including Senesino and Cuzzoni, and coincided with (and was perhaps the cause of) the height of London’s opera madness, with tickets changing hands for increasingly high prices on the black market. This recording of the 1723 version (Handel adapted the opera in later years for different singers) features James Bowman at the peak of his powers in the title role.

Alexander Balus brings to completion The King's Consort's series of Handel's four 'military' oratorios (the other three being Judas Maccabaeus, The Occasional Oratorio, and Joshua).
The story is a somewhat embellished retelling of chapters 10 and 11 from the first book of the Apocryphal Maccabees and involves complicated intrigues between the Jews, Syrians and Egyptians in the second century BC. To cut a long story short, Alexander Balus, King of Syria, is eventually defeated in battle by Ptolomee of Egypt and then killed by an Arab; but Ptolomee himself dies just three days later allowing Jonathan, the Chief of the Jews, to remind us of the fate of those who do not believe in the One God.

This is an attractive recording with a style very much suited to the unique repertoire on the program. These are not operatic duets but chamber pieces, to texts of mostly unknown poets, accompanied by a smooth continuo group consisting of cello, archlute, and director Robert King on keyboards. Many of them were written in Italy, early in Handel's career, but he returned to the form during his highly public years in the 1740s. The booklet makes much of the music's similarity to Handel's operatic language, and indeed some of the tunes here will be familiar. Sample the first part of Se tu non lasci amore, track 11, some of which turns up again in "O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?" from Messiah.

Acclaimed soprano Carolyn Sampson, partnered by Robert King and The King's Consort,with whom she has been associated throughout her professional career, turns her talents to Handel's two most dramatic cantatas, linked by the theme of abandoned women.

Other recent King's Singers' recordings on this label have reaffirmed the ensemble's credentials as compelling advocates of contemporary music. Here, only the most hardhearted of early music purists could fail to find the infectious cocktail of popular and religious Spanish music–largely 16th century–going to their heads, even if the King's Singers add the occasional theatrical embellishment. The music (much of it by "Anon") is organized into five categories, among them "fire" and "water" (with the alternative implications of ardor and alcohol).

It was Bach himself who founded the long tradition of transcribing his own music for varying instrumental grouping. The Six Trio Sonatas, BWV525-530, are here adapted to involve a wide rage of instrumental colours, with the five 'melody' instruments (two violins, viola, oboe, and obe d'amore) being paired in the manner most suited to each particular Sonata and being complemented by a similarly varied continuo. Originally written as tutorial pieces for his son's organ lessons, the Trio Sonatas are true masterpieces, each providing ample opportunity for virtuoso playing and the enjoyment of Bach's melodic genius.