Triumph of Maxamilion

Handel tinkered with this allegory throughout his career, producing various versions in Italian and English. The plot is a contest for the heart and mind of Beauty: Pleasure and Deceit encourage hedonism, arguing that "life consists in the present hour." Time and Counsel advise Beauty to forswear worldly pleasures, which "will soon decay". (Guess who wins.) You'd expect the villains to get all the good tunes, but the musical interest here is evenly spread. Time and Counsel get lively and contemplative arias; in particular, Varcoe makes Time's "Loathsome urns" beguiling and chilling. Kirkby, playing a villain for once, is an all-too-convincing Deceit; Partridge as Pleasure, though not ideally youthful, makes some gorgeous sounds. Fisher is well cast as Beauty, and Darlow's direction is a triumph.

On their third disc for Delphian, Ludus Baroque and five stellar soloists bring to life Handel's rarely-heard final oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth - a remarkable Protestant re-casting of a work written fifty years earlier to a text by the young composer's Roman patron Cardinal Pamphilj. The work, neglected by centuries of scholarship on account of its hybrid origins, here proves an extraordinary feast of riches, and the ideal vehicle for Richard Neville-Towle's carefully assembled cast of exceptional soloists, vigorous, intelligent chorus and an orchestra made up from some of the UK's leading period instrumentalists.