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“Tune Your Harps” : London Handel Festival Fundraising Concert at St.George’s, Hanover Square, London.  12.11.2007 (SL)


For many years now, the good people of the London Handel Society have staged a benefit concert and dinner to bring in funds to support the annual Handel Festival.  Being both a benefit (with singers and musicians presumably waiving all or part of their normal fees) and a precursor to the dinner and auction that follows, no-one would expect the musical entertainment to be either extensive or demanding, although one does hope for both entertainment and high musical standards.  We were not disappointed in most respects, although whether the choice of items (to reflect aspects of next year’s Festival showpiece opera and oratorio and a recently-released Society CD of “Esther”) worked as well as they might as a concert is open to discussion.

As ever, Laurence Cummings directed the London Handel Orchestra from the harpsichord and it was the instrumental items that underpinned the evening’s entertainment with strong work that illustrated just how much this band has developed and focussed itself in the last few years.  There was a consistency of quality and style in both the spirited Overture from “Atalanta” which opened the evening with the full complement of strings, brass and woodwind (special mention to Stephen Keavy on baroque trumpet and Gail Hennessy on oboe), and the heavier-weight Concerto grosso Opus 6 in F major with the reduced string forces standing to play with superb ensemble and tone. The elegant larghetto and menuet sections were particularly stylishly played with some ravishing string tone from leader Adrian Butterfield. The usual game of “spot the tune” ensued, as Handel did, of course, make much use of this sublime music throughout his composing career in other concerti, oratorio and even opera.

In contrast to the consistency of the players, the vocal element of the evening was more problematical.  With soprano Carolyn Sampson, now well established on the baroque performance front with solid operatic experience showing in both her stage presence and vocalism, we enjoyed some first-class Handelian singing.  It would be difficult to imagine a better performance of either the aria “Tune Your Harps” (Esther) or “O had I Jubal’s lyre” (Joshua) where Sampson combined lyrical line with a ringing top.  This young singer has always had power to spare, but now she has harnessed that considerable force to a subtle and shaded vocalism that brought out every nuance of Handel’s delicious word-painting. This level of production and technique regrettably showed up the current inadequacy of young Chris Ainslie’s skills to match her and the difference was both undeniable and unfortunate. He has only recently come to prominence in the capital with a degree of success in the Handel Singing Competition and student/semi-pro opera productions and this was perhaps a step too far in this company. His countertenor, at least at this stage of his career (and he is several years behind Sampson), has neither carrying power nor any great colour and he seemed to struggle with the rather low-lying “Dread not” (Esther) although found the faster, lighter “How can I stay when love invites” more suited to his abilities.  No doubt his day will come. In the duets, Sampson was generously adjusting both tone and dynamic to better suit the younger singer, and the results were pleasing, if not exciting – “Who calls my parting soul” was interesting in that both achieved an effective spectral timbre.  The evening ended with the duet “Oh peerless Maid, Oh generous Youth” from Joshua which neatly tied up a pleasant, if slightly disappointing, introduction to next year’s Festival offerings.

Sue  Loder

 

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