Susan George

Militante de l'altermondialisme issue d'une famille bourgeoise américaine, Susan George évoque son enfance, son parcours ainsi que ses luttes contre la globalisation, les abus de pouvoir et les injustices dans le monde, qu'elles soient d'ordre humain, économique ou financier. …

Giulio Cesare, Händels aufwändigste Oper aus dem Jahre 1724, markierte im März 1994 den Beginn der Münchner Händelrenaissance. Mit einer spektakulären Premiere sorgte Intendant Sir Peter Jonas international für Furore. Weit über 100 Aufführungen von 1994 bis 2006 spielten vor ausverkauftem Haus.

You'll find no stereotypical Biblical characters in The Occasional Oratorio; there are no characters at all. This work is nothing but a blood- and-glory martial celebration Handel hastily threw together to raise London's spirits in a crisis. (The "occasion" was the English counterattack against Bonnie Prince Charlie's rebellion.) Handel composed almost no original music for this work, instead lifting choice bits from Judas Maccabeus, Comus, Athalia, Israel in Egypt–he even closes the work with Zadok the Priest! Handel aficionados will have great fun picking out which numbers originated where. In fact, pretty much everyone will have fun listening to this music (gloriously performed by Robert King and his regulars); it is–as it were–a blast.

Celebrate the 250th anniversary of Handel's death with this impressive box set. 30-CD box set of the composer's most celebrated works–including the Royal Fireworks and Water Music, The Messiah, concerti grossi and much more! Featuring conductors Sir Neville Marriner, Christopher Hogwood, Trevor Pinnock, Mark Minkowski and others. Performances by the Gabrielli Players, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, English Baroque Soloists and others.

‘Deborah contains some of the most glorious music Handel ever wrote. Even if many of the numbers have been recycled from earlier works, the invention is still staggering. Handel devotees can thus amuse themselves spotting the tunes while everyone else can revel in the sumptuous scoring and the sheer vitality and humanity of the piece, all superbly conveyed in Robert King's recording’.

After the success of Alexander's Feast, a setting of the much admired ode by John Dryden, it was wondered: would the result be greater still if Handel could be persuaded to set the words of a poet even greater than Dryden? Such were the thoughts of an important group of Handel's friends centred around the philosopher James Harris and including Charles Jennens (later the librettist of Messiah) and the Fourth Earl of Shaftesbury. It was under their influence that Handel came to set the poetry of John Milton, first in L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, and later in the oratorio Samson.

The Mendelssohn sonatas are established standard repertoire items for most organists. Comminssioned in London as Voluntaries and then published simultaneously in four different countries, they are notable for their lack of consistent form, ranging from two to four movements, and eight to fifteen minutes in length. Scottish organist Susan Landale graduated from Edinburgh University and then continued her studies with the great French organist Andre Marchal in Paris. She was later appointed organist of St. George's Anglican Church, Paris, a post she held for eighteen years.

Among all his remarkable and varied compositional talents, Purcell was the supreme craftsman when it came to setting his native language to music. Addison wrote of Purcell’s ‘Tunes so wonderfully adapted to his Words’ and Playford, in his introduction to the first volume of Orpheus Britannicus (1706) commented that ‘The Author’s extraordinary Tallent in all sorts of music, is sufficiently known; but he was particularly admir’d for his Vocal, having a peculiar Genius to express the Energy of English Words, whereby he mov’d the Passions as well as caused Admiration in all his Auditors’. Purcell combined an innate sense of the natural rhythms of speech and a wonderful melodic flair with a richness of harmonic language that few composers have ever matched.