Once Handel started
writing major works setting the English
language he became the target of friends
who had ideas about what sort of things
he should set. He had collaborated within
a group once before. When working for
Lord Burlington, the literary circle
surrounding him (including such people
as Alexander Pope) came up the suggestions
of and the librettos to Acis and
Galatea and Esther.
Handel seems to have
been strong-minded enough to be able
to take suggestions from his friends
and develop them or not as he saw fit.
L’Allegro belongs to the fertile
period when he was running Italian opera
and English dramatic works in parallel.
He had already set librettos by Charles
Jennens (notably Saul) as well
as such paragons as Dryden, so his friends
were keen for him to show what he could
do with Milton. James Harris prepared
a treatment of Milton’s poems ‘L’Allegro’
and ‘Il Penseroso’. Handel was sympathetic
to the idea but disliked Harris’s treatment
and arranged for Jennens to provide
him with a libretto which interleaved
the two poems in order to create more
variety of texture and mood. In the
Augustan Age rational balance was all
and so for a closing third part, Il
Moderato, Jennens provided his own words
in which the moderate man tempers the
words of the cheerful and the pensive
man. The work is not a dramatic oratorio
but rather a pastoral ode, close in
form to the Dryden settings, Alexander’s
Feast and Ode for St. Cecilia’s
Day.
L’Allegro is
not a showy, dramatic work; it is one
of those pieces in English pastoral
vein which Handel mined so successfully
throughout his English career. Such
varied works as Acis and Galatea,
Semele, Susanna and L’Allegro
are linked by Handel’s feel for the
pastoral imagery and the echoes of the
English masque.
But this means that
L’Allegro, lacking big showpieces
and relying on gentle understatement
and charm, is a tricky piece to bring
off. For these discs Naxos has issued
a recording which was originally released
on the Junge Kantorei’s own label. It
joins their growing collection of recordings
of Handel oratorios but this recording
demonstrates the potential weaknesses
of their policy of buying recordings.
The recording was made
live and unfortunately it has many of
the vices and few of the virtues of
live recording. I am sure that if I
had been present in Kloster Eberbach,
where the concert took place, I would
have had an enjoyable evening. But transferred
to disc, the performance lacks the élan
and vitality that live recording can
bring. Instead a sort of dutiful carefulness
takes over, as if everyone was aware
of making mistakes in front of the microphones.
The recording was taken from a single
concert, which probably did not help.
The soloists are recorded
quite closely and not really given sufficient
air. This goes some way to explaining
why I found the sopranos Linda Perillo
and Barbara Hannigan, so unaffecting.
They both have good lyric voices but
neither quite brings to the music the
quality of affecting charm which is
required. Tenor Knut Schoch is a fine
stylist but suffers similarly. All three
were rather weak when it came to the
passagework and more virtuoso elements
of the music.
The chorus make a fine,
stylish sound and I would like to hear
more of them, in better circumstances.
But next time, in their native language
please. Their English is creditable
but indistinct. They do not project
the text with clarity and that is an
essential in an oratorio performance.
This lack of emphasis on the words carries
over to the soloists; their diction
is decent enough but they just don’t
make enough of the words.
The orchestra play
quite stylishly but their playing lacks
the infectious bounce which much of
this music ought to have. A few untidinesses
in the ensemble can perhaps be forgiven
as this is a live recording.
The work is played
complete, with no cuts in the third
part. Handel did not write an overture
for the piece and he is known to have
played an Organ Concerto during it.
For this performance the conductor Joachim
Carlos Martini has opted to preface
part 1 with a movement from Concerto
Gross No. 6 Opus 1, and parts 2 and
3 with movements from the organ concerti.
I am not convinced that this works and
I see no reason why the work should
not be given as Handel wrote it. The
booklet contains notes and biographies;
the text (English with a German translation)
is available for downloading from the
Naxos site.
‘L’Allegro’ is available
in a venerable, but still highly desirable,
recording by John Eliot Gardiner, the
Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque
Soloists. More recently Robert King
and the King’s Consort have also issued
a superb recording. Turning to the Gardiner
recording we discover all the qualities
of charm and élan that Martini’s
performance lacks. Gardiner and his
forces give a beautiful shapeliness
to the Penseroso and a lovely dance-like
quality to the Allegro sections.
So if you want a recording,
it is probably worth stretching to the
price of Gardiner or King. Though Martini’s
performance is available at budget price
on Naxos I would hesitate to recommend
the discs as an introduction to Handel’s
work. The performances comes over as
sober and a little dutiful; they are
severely lacking in charm and humour.
Compared with a performance such as
that by the Gardiner or King, this one
could leave a newcomer seriously underwhelmed.
A performance of ‘L’Allegro’ should
be enchanting and this one isn’t. For
that, you will need to turn to Gardiner
or King.
Robert Hugill
Frankfurt Baroque Orchestra/Joachim Carlos Martini
