Georg Frideric HANDEL (1685-1759)
Cantata ‘Splenda l’alba in oriente’, HWV 166 (1730s) [12:32]
Cantata ‘Carco sempre di gloria’, HWV 87 (1730s) [14:40]
Cantata ‘Tu Fedel? Tu Costante?’, HWV 171 (1707) [18:43]
Cantata ‘Look down harmonious Saint’, HWV 124 (1736) [11:21]
Neun Deutschen Arien (1724):
No. 6: Meine Seele hört im Sehen, HWV 207 [4:10]
No. 4: Süsse Stille, sanfter Quelle, HWV 205 [3:56]
Robert Tear (tenor: HWV 124, Deutschen Arien)
Helen Watts (contralto: HWV 87, 166 & 171)
English Chamber Orchestra/Raymond Leppard
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields/Neville Marriner
rec. March 1961, Kingsway Hall, London; November 1969, St John’s Smith Square, London (Robert Tear)
No texts
ELOQUENCE 482 4753 [65:57]
It’s a feature of Eloquence’s restoration programme that they include small photographs of the original LP sleeves from which the music derives. This one is no different and visually one can’t help observing the typographic and illustrative differences between Helen Watts’ LP, released in 1962 – elegant, ornate, decidedly in best L’Oiseau-Lyre retro fashion – and Robert Tear’s Argo 1970-released affair, all chunky font and primary colours. From ball gown to bellbottoms in eight years.
Watts teamed with Raymond Leppard and the English Chamber Orchestra for three Handel cantatas, two of which survive in torso form. Splenda l’alba in oriente and Carco sempre di Gloria contain the residue of larger works; both survive in the form of an aria followed by a recitative and aria – to be strictly accurate the latter begins with a recit before the first aria. Watts is on typically vital form, powerfully expressive, and with a technique quite able to surmount any of the divisions and coloratura demands of the music. The voice is well focused, and her Italian is persuasive. It’s inevitable that the recits are subject to the prevailing and familiar Leppardian practice of the time, so that his sustained accompaniment, directed from his Goff harpsichord, can tend to hold things back somewhat – but only somewhat. Today’s staccato accompaniment materially adjusts this effect in line with period practice. The final cantata is Tu Fedel? Tu Constante? Fortunately, it’s survived complete and Watts’ commanding performance – especially the stirring aria Se Licori, and in her splendidly articulated agitation in Sì crudel – brings the work dramatically alive to the listener.
Tear was accompanied by Marriner and the ASMF. Look down harmonious Saint was one of three cantatas in this disc devoted to St Cecilia. Though short, once again – compact might be the better word – it affords Tear numerous opportunities for clarion declamation, control of its various emotive states, and tempi. These, he and Marriner both locate and unfold with great joy. The two selected German Arias form an appropriate pairing, No.6 being the faster. Both have roles for string obbligatos – Alan Loveday being one, I assume.
The restorations are unproblematic and the booklet features a good essay by Peter Watchorn but no texts.
At a time when some fine Handel discs and excerpts were being recorded – one thinks variously of Baker, Sutherland, Greevy, Forbes Robinson – this drawing together of Watts and Tear adds a further layer of excellence to the restoration scene.
Jonathan Woolf
