Handel Creation

“[These suites] have rarely been recorded or promoted by harpsichordists during the most recent revival of interest in ‘early music.’” I realize that Richard Egarr is entitled to his own opinions—his liner notes on an earlier release, for example, likened the humor in Purcell’s harpsichord music to that of the wonderful old 1950s BBC comedy The Goon Show —but he’s not entitled to his own facts. Christopher Brodersen pointed out in a 2011 review of these works featuring Laurence Cummings ( Fanfare 34:5) that ArkivMusic listed nine complete sets played on the harpsichord, with several others on the piano. I find some of the suites have considerably more recordings than that, in 2014: 26 for the Suite in A Major, 28 for the Suite in D Minor, 25 for the Suite in E Minor, 47 for the Suite in E Major. If such numbers reflect rare recordings, I have to wonder what Egarr would consider a moderate number, let alone a frequent one.

John Beard was a young tenor who came to George Frideric Handel’s attention when still a teenager. He inspired the great composer to give new focus to the tenor voice within his English oratorios. Beard was Handel’s ideal in his demands for ‘articulate utterance of the words and a just expression of the melody’- a collaboration that climaxed in Handel’s creation of the first truly great tenor part as the hero in Samson. Grammy Award-winning tenor Aaron Sheehan steps into John Beard’s shoes equipped with a voice of ‘shining quality and deep sensitivity’ (The New York Times).

There is no shortage of recordings of this, Handel’s most popular orchestral work. It has been proffered in renditions with ensembles large and small, and warmly embraced by both period- and modern-instrument enthusiasts. There are even recordings of excerpts arranged early in the 20th century for “modern” symphony orchestra by the eminent Irish conductor and composer Sir Hamilton Harty. It was in this last incarnation that most of us baby boomers first encountered Handel’s marvelous creation. One of the interesting points found on this release comes in scans 11 and 12. They are the original versions—pitched in the key of F—of two movements usually performed as part of the sequence of pieces in D. Mackerras includes both the original and revised movements in their appropriate spots. I prefer Handel’s originals, as they bring down the curtain on the set of pieces in F with more of a feeling of finality than the D-Minor movement that usually rounds out the suite…
– Michael Carter, Fanfare

Cet oratorio postérieur au Messie passe pour avoir conservé les faveurs du public depuis sa création en 1747. Pourtant il n’existe actuellement que deux versions enregistrées disponibles, dont une seule sur instruments baroques. La sortie de cet enregistrement live de 2006, avec toute la technique la plus sophistiquée du moment, fait donc figure d’événement.