Dominus

It was in Rome, where he resided between 1707 and 1710, that the young Handel composed these three dazzling sacred works. The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and the RIAS Kammerchor give us an extremely lively and colourful reading of these pieces in which the composer showcased his talent: allegiance to the forms of the past, total mastery of counterpoint and, already, a unique feeling for storytelling. Everything here announces musical genius.

As usual with Harry Christophers and the Sixteen, the performance is very "clean", in some places perhaps to the point of being "clinical". There are, nevertheless, a number of "peaks" (such as when Michael George begins his "Sicut sagittae in manu potentis" or in the "De torrente in via bibet" for two sopranos and choir towards the end of the Dixit Dominus). … "Silete Venti" by far excels the other two pieces on the disc. Lynne Dawson, possibly the best female Handelian in the entire English early music scene, performs the whole motet with warmth, inner conviction and personal charm, and her vocal timbre, pure as a bell, magnificently complements Handel's typical strings-with-oboes orchestral sound.

The Belgian early music group Vox Luminis has made several wonderful recordings of lesser-known Baroque repertory. They cultivate a distinctive sound with ten or 15 singers (here there are ten) and a small instrumental group, diverging completely from the general Italianate-operatic trend toward brisk tempos, sharp accents, and dramatic conceptions. Here they take on two very familiar works and meet the challenge of creating unique interpretations. Even in the splendid Bach Magnificat in D major, BWV 243 (sample one of the big choruses, perhaps "Fecit potentiam"), they are smooth and even delicate. The sound is all the more impressive in that leader Lionel Meunier does not really conduct; he sings in the choir itself. Yet the carefully burnished sound is extremely coherent. The effect is to deliver a personal aspect even to these highly public works. In this kind of reading there is the necessity for the performers to deliver text intelligibility and for the instrumentalists to deliver balance, and all succeed nicely, as do Alpha Classics' engineers, working in a pair of churches (Belgian for the Handel, Dutch for the Bach). This is a beautifully rendered representation of standard repertory that draws you into entirely new ways of looking at the music.

Vivaldi's Dixit Dominus, RV 807, was added to the Vivaldi canon only in 2005; it was long attributed to Baldassare Galuppi. That shows you how minor composers don't get their due; it's a marvelous work, but it's only getting recordings now that Vivaldi's name is attached to it. At any rate, it's well worth hearing in this excellent performance by the rising British group La Nuova Musica, which has both vocal and instrumental components. They move like a well-oiled machine, making possible the clear communication of such vivid details as the musical depiction of a stream in the strings in the countertenor aria De torrente in via bibet (track 8) and the unusually elaborate fugue that concludes the work.