Rene Jacobs

Saul is one of Handel's largest oratorios; its rich orchestration includes trumpets, trombones, timpani, harp, and carillon. René Jacobs certainly wrests every drop of color from this luxurious array of instruments, particularly in the choruses, which are gloriously grand but also extremely exciting. In Nos. 20-24, where the populace (with maddening relentlessness) praises David above Saul to the incessant jangling of the carillon, it's easy to understand why the king objects to the unseemly revelry. Handel's music wonderfully suggests both the joyous celebration and seeds of jealousy being planted in Saul's mind. Similarly, Jacobs' careful choice of colors for the continuo part makes the famous "Dead March" far more solemn than it often sounds, an appropriate introduction to Handel's "Elegy on the death of Saul and Jonathan".

With the belief that “No opera loses so much as Die Zauberflöte if one strips it of its drama and that means, above all, the spoken dialogue,” René Jacobs’ agenda in Die Zauberflöte is to rehabilitate the reputation of Schikaneder’s libretto. At the heart of his reassesment is the idea that Schikaneder and Mozart’s Masonic message is deeper and more carefully presented than we have thought. He suggests that seemingly silly or inconsistent aspects of the story are put there as intentional false paths as the audience, not only the prince and the bird catcher, undergoes its own trials of initiation. The opera’s symbolism and structure are explained in convincing detail in an essay in the booklet by the Egyptologist and Mozart researcher Jan Assman.

Amongst several delightful examples of mid- and late-baroque German solo cantatas included here, one stands out as a little masterpiece. It's a lamentation by Johann Christoph Bach, the leading composer of the Bach dynasty before Johann Sebastian. I cannot imagine any listener to be capable of hearing this music without in some way being affected by its poignancy.

The real prize in this jam packed nine-CD set is of course the incandescent recording of Giulio Cesare with some of the most phenomenal singing on record by Larmore, Schlick, and Fink. When this came out it created quite a stir, given it is about as complete as it ever has been, and filled with Jacob’s searching and trend-setting conducting. While it won’t displace favorites of yesteryear, those recordings are of a different era and style altogether, and here the opera comes together in a manner fully redolent of what Handel must have envisioned.

The appetite for evolving performance practices in Bach’s St Matthew Passion appears undiminished as we have gradually shifted, over the generations, from larger to smaller ensembles and also towards a greater dramatic understanding of the implications of Bach’s ambitious ‘stereophonic’ double choir and orchestra choreography. René Jacobs has never been shy of a new hunch and taking it as far as (and sometimes beyond) what is either reasonable or defining.

Capriccio's Telemann: Cantatas & Odes finds illustrious countertenor René Jacobs estranged from his established home base of Harmonia Mundi and seeming a little like a fish out of water. Joining Jacobs on this soft adventure is the Akademie für Alte Musik, Berlin, providing a very restrained even hesitant performance as his backing group in a program of some of Telemann's vocal music; three cantatas, adapted from their highly condensed published editions.

Cavalli was the leading composer of opera in Venice during the 1650s, and Calisto (which premiered in November 1651) finds him at the height of his powers. Giovanni Faustini’s mythologically based libretto for Calisto tells the story of the amorous trials of two couples: Calisto, a female devotee of the goddess Diana, and her pursuer, Jove; and Diana herself, and the shepherd Endymion. As a follower of Diana, Calisto has rejected carnal relations with men; as a result, in order to win her affection, Jove disguises himself as Diana, and Calisto willingly follows him in that guise to enjoy carnal pleasure. Calisto’s actions invoke the wrath of both Diana herself, and of Jove’s wife Juno. According to the myth, Calisto is transformed into a bear, and will later ascend to the firmament as the constellation Ursa Minor. Diana, in Faustini’s version, finally admits to loving Endymion; they remain devoted to each other, but their relationship remains unconsummated.

It has haunted René Jacobs since childhood: first as a boy soprano in Ghent, then as a countertenor, he has constantly frequented the supreme masterpiece that is the 'St Matthew Passion'. Jacobs uses the layout of the Good Friday Vesper service from Bach's time, with choirs front and back, rather than side-by-side. He also gives us extra soloists to complete the bi-choral effect. For Bach, the two halves were 28 metres apart. At that distance, coordination difficulties begin to appear between the speed of light, and the speed of sound, and we cannot determine how Bach dealt with this problem. However the wonders of SACD multichannel surround sound can at last give an impression of what Bach intended for St Thomas’ Church in Leipzig.