George Frideric HANDEL (1685-1759)
Alexander’s Feast (1736)
Gerlinde Sämann (soprano); Knut Schoch (tenor); Klaus Mertens (bass); Junge
Kantorei
Frankfurt Baroque Orchestra/Joachim Carlos Martini
rec. live, Kloster Eberbach, Rheingau, Germany, 11 May 2008
NAXOS 8.572224 [79:49]
While it’s late for the Handel Anniversary year, this Feast is very
welcome. This is the latest instalment in Martini’s Naxos Handel series from
Frankfurt: other releases include Solomon,
Hercules,
Tobit
and Semele.
It won’t please Anglophone purists but I found much of it very enjoyable.
The disc gains hugely from being a live performance, though the audience is
so well behaved that you would never guess it. There is a good sense of to-and-fro
and there’s creative energy coming from the audience: never did it feel stilted.
Above all, Martini’s direction is flexible and always interesting. He is helped
by a band that responds convincingly to every nuance. The juicy orchestral
sounds add an entirely distinctive air to this performance, something I was
very happy to live with. Timotheus’ harp solo in track 4 and the exciting
figurations when the king “seizes a flambeau” are only two examples. Martini
propels the action forwards so that the pace never flags and attention never
wavers.
Happily, the solo singing is just as good. Gerlinde Sämann’s soprano is bright
and clear, almost in the Emma Kirkby category. She responds well to the inflections
(and frequent repetitions) in the text, such as in track 19 (The Prince,
unable to conceal his pain). Klaus Mertens is a steady, dependable bass,
who manages beauty in the stiller moments but is vigorous and agile for Timotheus’
call of revenge. Knut Schoch produces lovely tone, but he falls prey to the
set’s greatest weakness: the frequently poor pronunciation of English. He
is the first to sound heavily accented, but far more serious is the laxity
of the chorus. Listening to them sounds like wading through treacle at times,
with too many words lost in the aural fog. This is a terrible shame as their
sound is quite attractive, though no-one would describe it as lithe. For that
reason I can’t really recommend this disc, especially in light of the strong
competition. You don’t need to have a group of native English speakers for
this music but you do need to have clearly audible words which match the transparent
orchestral textures. With this set I needed a text to follow, and matters
were made worse by the fact that Naxos do not provide one. Not all is lost
in a worthy performance, but this shouldn’t be your final choice for Alexander’s
Feast.
Simon Thompson
see also review by John Sheppard