Meurtes au Potageur du Roy

Sigismund Neukomm (1778-1858) was one of the most remarkable characters of the music scene in the classical and early romantic era. He started as a pupil of Johann Michael Haydn, and later had close ties with his older Joseph Haydn. During his life he came into contact with almost every composer of fame. He travelled throughout Europe, but didn't stay very long at one place. It is assumed he has written about 2,000 works. Among them are 50 masses, three funeral services and four Requiems.

François-André Danican Philidor started his musical career as a boy chorister in the Chapelle Royal at Versailles. Taught by Campra, his first motet was performed there in 1738. At the same time as he was building his career in music, Philidor acquired considerable ability as a chess player, and in the 1740s he could regularly be found playing opponents such as Voltaire and Rousseau in the Café de la Régence.

The Deutsche Schalmey has occupied a shadowy place in music history, not quite a shawm, not quite an oboe. This disk gives it a real existence, and presents it very pursuasively, with well played, idiomatic music. The sound is what you would expect with characteristics of the oboe and shawm mixed together.

Neukomm spent twenty years in the service of Prince Talleyrand, who commissioned him to write a requiem mass in memory of Louis XVI, guillotined in Paris on 21 January 1793. is was the second mass of the y he was eventually to compose, several of which were dedi- cated to monarchs. e Requiem was given at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna on 21 January 1815 by more than three hundred singers divided into two choirs. Neukomm conducted one of them, while the other was directed by his friend Salieri.

Agrippina was staged for the first time in late December 1709 - or possibly at the beginning of 1710 - at Venice’s Teatro San Grisostomo and met with enormous success, as testified by twenty-seven following performances, a record number even for 18th-century standards. Agrippina’s triumph sanctioned Handel’s definitive investiture as an operatic composer. After nearly 300 years this opera appears as a masterpiece of 18th-century music and an innovative work, considering that when Handel composed it he was just twenty-four years old. The composer’s melodic creativity and sense of theatre are quite remarkable. The cast, conducted by Jean-Claude Malgoire, includes Véronique Gens in the title role.

Catone in Utica (1737), written for the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, is one of Vivaldi’s last operatic masterpieces. Its splendid score, however, has come down to us incomplete: in fact the first of the three acts is missing. With infinite patience, Jean-Claude Malgoire has reconstructed the missing act, realising the recitative passages complying perfectly to Vivaldi’s stylistic idiom and integrating the missing arias with original arias taken from other operas written by the Red Priest. Thus Catone in Utica is at last available, in a world-première recording, in its complete form.

Serse is a light and elegant comedy. It opens with the most famous of all Handel's arias, the notorious “Ombre mai fu“ (or Largo), quite a different piece when heard in context. Its mock solemnity sets the tone for what follows. The opera moves swiftly and charmingly, the recitatives often interspersed with brief ariosos rather than full-fledged arias. Outstanding in the cast is Hendricks, her voice flexible and distinctive, clearer and purer than it would become (after the tone began to unknit). She sings with great charm. Watkinson is a fluent Serse but doesn't leave a lasting impression. Oddly enough, I enjoyed Esswood's work more.

Rinaldo (HWV 7) is an opera by George Frideric Handel, composed in 1711, and was the first Italian language opera written specifically for the London stage. The libretto was prepared by Giacomo Rossi from a scenario provided by Aaron Hill, and the work was first performed at the Queen's Theatre in London's Haymarket on 24 February 1711. The story of love, war and redemption, set at the time of the First Crusade, is loosely based on Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme liberata ("Jerusalem Delivered"), and its staging involved many original and vivid effects. It was a great success with the public, despite negative reactions from literary critics hostile to the contemporary trend towards Italian entertainment in English theatres.

Giulio Cesare proved by far the most popular of Handel’s operas, both originally and in modern revivals. Its straightforward plot and all-star original cast drew from Handel exceptional depth and subtlety in musical characterisation and lavish orchestral colours; Cleopatra’s seductive stage orchestra – harp, theorbo and viola da gamba with muted accompaniment from the pit – is unique. René Jacobs set the standard in 1991 (on Harmonia Mundi). By comparison, this is milder, more pensive. Bowman is superbly flexible – he seems to become ever more fluent over the years – yet less powerful and imperious than Jennifer Larmore, the earlier.