Handel

Although George Frideric Handel is thought of as the quintessential “English” composer, we should not forget that he was born in Halle, Germany and had a similar upbringing to such contemporaries as Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach, among others. His teacher from 1692 was Friedrich Wilhelm Zachau, organist at the Marktkirche, Halle. When Zachau died in 1712, Bach was approached to become his successor in Halle, a position he declined even though a contract had been drawn up and needed only his signature. At that time Handel was well traveled and far from Halle, having spent some years in Hamburg, where he was active in the opera, then more years based in Rome, and by 1712 had already been in London for two years. Thus Handel’s career, and the music he composed, was somewhat different from that of Bach and his contemporaries in Germany. But despite the differences, the roots were the same, and Handel maintained his contacts in Germany and was fully aware of the music being performed there.

Brilliant Classics continues its famous Composer Edition series with one of the giants of the Baroque, George Frideric Handel, the celebrated German who settled in London. Having absorbed the German and Italian styles of his time he formed his own distinctive musical language, which, while following the current fashions and audience preferences, retained his own deep humanity and inner power.

The tale of ill-fated Dido and her Aeneas, as recounted by Virgil, fascinated the 18th century English, who saw it as relevant to the royal machinations they had experienced over the previous hundred years. The glorious economy of Purcell's version was never matched, but numerous versions of the setting by famed Italian librettist Pietro Metastasio were performed on London stages. Handel gets top billing in the graphics here, but in fact this Didone Abbandonata is a work by the Italian composer Leonardo Vinci, who died at age 40 in 1730 before his influence was fully appreciated.

Both in his own time and after his death, George Frideric Handel’s outstanding reputation as a composer has rested mainly on the grandly stirring gestures of his most public works: the operas and oratorios he composed for the theatres of Georgian London. Nevertheless, Handel’s oeuvre includes a substantial body of chamber music, including some of the most satisfying and beautiful secular music of the period. Handel’s considerable collection of vocal works reveals a preference for texts in Italian and English, with very few works in his native German.

On her solo debut CD, Muffat Meets Handel, the successful young harpsichordist Flóra Fábri performs harpsichord pieces by precisely these two composers. Although the dates of the two musicians overlap for a period of almost seventy years, the same thing happened in this case as with many of Handel’s contemporaries: the two never met personally. However, unlike Bach and Mattheson, here musical awareness of the other did not operate in accordance with a 'one-way-street principle': it was not only Muffat who admired Handel and arranged his music; the process also functioned the other way around.

“Carmelite Vespers 1709” presents a reconstruction of musical performances in Rome in 1709, based on a new critical edition by Italian Handel expert Angela Romagnoli. In early 18th century-Rome the holiday of Madonna del Carmine was celebrated with a lavish musical pasticcio. Italian Early Music specialist Alessandro de Marchi, his Academia Montis Regalis and an excellent ensemble of solo vocalists present the reconstruction of such a service as it might have been performed in 1709 under the direction of Venetian master Antonio Caldara (1670–1736).