Volke

Latest release on VIVAT brings Mendelssohn’s astonishing reconstruction of Handel’s great oratorio Israel in Egypt. Mendelssohn’s 1833 Düsseldorf performance has been painstakingly reconstructed from fragments and sources across Europe: the large and colourful orchestra, playing nineteenth-century instruments, produces vivid new sonorities, and the double choir sings magnificently. Listeners familiar with Handel’s 1739 version will also find new numbers, significant changes to the order of movements and very different orchestrations. The work starts with a thrilling, pure-Mendelssohn overture, mixing life and energy with moments of exquisitely shifting instrumental colours. There is fine solo singing from solo sopranos Lydia Teuscher and Julia Doyle, alto Hilary Summers, tenor Benjamin Hulett, and bass Roderick Williams: Robert King and The King’s Consort are on top form.

One of the top singers of her generation, soprano Barbara Hendricks has excelled both on the operatic stage and in concert halls. Noted for her humanitarian work, Hendricks has had an exceptionally long career as a performer and recording artist. Hendricks was born on November 20, 1948, in Stephens, Arkansas. As a girl, she took voice lessons and sang many solos. She attended Horace Mann High School in Little Rock, graduating with honors, and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and chemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

David Temple conducts the Crouch End Festival Chorus and London Mozart Players with a formidable group of soloists on this album celebrating the works of the siblings Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Hensel (née Mendelssohn). Fanny’s cantata Hiob, based on the Book of Job, is the second of three cantatas composed between February and November 1831, although it remained unpublished until 1992. Later in her short career, encouraged by her brother and her friend Robert von Keudell, Fanny did begin to publish her works. The Gartenlieder, Op. 3 for unaccompanied choir were composed in 1846, and inspired by the gardens and summerhouse at the family’s Leipzigerstraße residence, in Berlin, where she held her choir rehearsals. Mendelssohn’s Die erste Walpurgisnacht is a secular cantata, a setting of the poem by Goethe, originally performed in 1831. Mendelssohn revised the work extensively in 1843, and it is this later version that is performed here. His Christmas cantata Vom Himmel hoch, based on a Lutheran chorale, was completed in 1831..

David Temple conducts the Crouch End Festival Chorus and London Mozart Players with a formidable group of soloists on this album celebrating the works of the siblings Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny Hensel (nee Mendelssohn).