Christopher Purves Sings Handel Sunday 7 January 2018 7.30Pm, Milton Court Concert Hall
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Christopher Purves sings Handel Sunday 7 January 2018 7.30pm, Milton Court Concert Hall Handel Rinaldo – ‘Sibilar gli angui d’Aletto’ Siroe, re di Persia – ‘Gelido in ogni vena’ Agrippina – Overture Belshazzar – ‘Opprest with never ceasing grief’ Concerto grosso in D major, Op 6 No 5 Athalia – ‘Ah, canst thou but prove me’ interval 20 minutes Acis and Galatea – ‘I rage, I melt, I burn ... Chris Gloag O ruddier than the cherry’ Aci, Galatea e Polifemo – ‘Fra l’ombre e gl’orrori’ Theodora – Overture Theodora – ‘Racks, gibbets, sword and fire’ Concerto grosso in F major, Op 3 No 4 Esther – ‘How art thou fall’n’ Esther – ‘Turn not, O Queen’ Christopher Purves baritone Arcangelo Jonathan Cohen conductor/harpsichord Part of Barbican Presents 2017–18 Programme produced by Harriet Smith; printed by Trade Winds Colour Printers Ltd; advertising by Cabbell (tel 020 3603 7930) Please turn off watch alarms, phones, pagers etc during the performance. Taking photographs, capturing images or using recording devices during a performance is strictly prohibited. If anything limits your enjoyment please let us know The City of London during your visit. Additional feedback can be given Corporation is the founder and online, as well as via feedback forms or the pods principal funder of located around the foyers. the Barbican Centre Welcome Tonight we welcome one of the most Christopher Purves has already explored distinctive baritones of today – Christopher these characters on disc, with his acclaimed Purves, a musician equally at home Hyperion release with Arcangelo, Handel’s creating new roles in contemporary opera Finest Arias for Base Voice, which will be as he is in the concert hall. This evening he followed up by a second volume later explores the music of a single composer, this year. but arguably one of the greatest dramatists of all time – George Frideric Handel. He couldn’t wish for finer compansions on his Handelian journey than Arcangelo The sheer variety of characters that we will under its founder and multi-talented Artistic hear brought to life attests to the brilliantly Director Jonathan Cohen. inventive way in which Handel wrote for bass and baritone voices, conjuring It promises to be a thrilling evening. I hope power-obsessed tyrants one moment and you enjoy it. lovestruck monsters the next. The music is by turns dark, dramatic, virtuosic and full Huw Humphreys, Head of Music, Barbican of humour. Barbican Classical Music Podcasts Stream or download our Barbican Classical Music podcasts for exclusive interviews and content from the best classical artists from around the world. Recent artists include Sir James MacMillan, George Benjamin, Andrew Norman, Iestyn Davies, Joyce DiDonato, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Evgeny Kissin, Maxim Vengerov and Nico Muhly. Available on iTunes, Soundcloud and the Barbican website 2 George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) All the world’s a stage Programme note For texts, please see page 6 in Venice with the opera Agrippina, at which members of the audience reputedly shouted ‘viva No other composer of the early 18th century il caro Sassone!’ (the magnificent overture, with was as expert as Handel at drawing together its fiendish virtuoso oboe solo part, affords us a eclectic musical elements and styles to create the glimpse of Handel’s mastery of theatrical tension wide range of complex personalities with which in his orchestral writing). Within a few months he his dramatic works abound. Tonight’s concert had become Kapellmeister at the court of the features a varied assortment from Handel’s Elector of Hanover (who would soon become operas, oratorios and other works that illustrates George I of Great Britain), but straightaway how the composer responded imaginatively Handel travelled to England. and engagingly to diverse characters and their predicaments, with qualities ranging from humour, Soon after his arrival in late 1710 he was affection, tenderness and joy to nastiness, lust, commissioned to compose Rinaldo (first violence and grief (and a single character is performed 1711) – the first all-Italian opera to be capable of shifting from one mood to another in created especially for the London stage. ‘Sibilar an instant). gli angui d’Aletto’ is the roaring first entrance of the villainous Argante, infidel King of Jerusalem, Many bass roles in Handel’s music dramas who disturbs the contemplative reverie of the are political tyrants whose lust for power – or Christian crusader heroes. The calm Eustazio has a woman, or both – turns them into menacing only just finished singing a wise text about the bullies for whom we may feel a mix of disgust and wheel of fortune spinning and the importance empathy; but the bass voice was also usually the of virtuous constancy, when Argante bursts in to composer’s preference for anxious old fathers parley with the enemy in gloriously bellicose music worrying about their children, and sometimes that features four trumpets and drums. His manic several of these stereotypes can be mixed into one declaration that he seems to hear ‘the hissing of character. These theatrical personalities are more Alecto’s serpents and the howling of voracious fascinating than they are sometimes credited to Scylla’ makes little sense because the text and be; much of their best music is compelling and musical essence of the aria are borrowed from directly comparable in quality with the composer’s the brutish Polifemo’s arrival in Aci, Galatea e most popular arias for higher voices. Indeed, Polifemo (Naples, 1708), but notwithstanding the this concert takes the listener on a rollercoaster text’s peculiar irrelevance in Rinaldo, the musical journey through works created throughout impact offers a subtext that fits: Argante is a cocky Handel’s long career, and the various Italian bully who wants to intimidate his besiegers, but in arias and English airs serve to explode the unfair the event he appears ridiculous, akin to a strutting yet all-too-common notion that his bass arias are peacock preening his feathers. one-dimensional. In 1712 Handel settled permanently in the British A native of Halle, Handel spent a few years capital city, and in 1727 he became a naturalised becoming closely acquainted with opera in British citizen. By this time he was the principal Hamburg, and then toured Italy for just over three artistic director (to use modern parlance) of the years; his grand tour culminated triumphantly Royal Academy of Music – a company founded 3 by Royal Charter to establish more effective perpetrated upon Judah by Queen Athalia – the governance of regular high-quality seasons daughter of Jezebel – Abner reacts with hearty of Italian operas at the King’s Theatre on the enthusiasm to the High Priest Joad’s carefully Haymarket. All of the Royal Academy’s annual worded question about whether the captain seasons between 1720 and 1728 featured would support a coup d’état if a suitable true Giuseppe Maria Boschi, who had sung Argante descendant of David had survived (Athalia thinks in the original production of Rinaldo. The bass she has killed them all, even including her own seems to have been particularly good at playing grandchildren). Handel’s assertive ‘Ah, canst implacable tyrants. Towards the dramatic climax thou but prove me’ makes Abner’s allegiances of the final act of Siroe (1728), the guilty remorse abundantly clear, and is a key moment that of the selfish and paranoid Persian king Cosroe persuades Joad to unveil the rightful heir Joas (a is depicted in ‘Gelido in ogni vena’ (a Larghetto boy who does not yet know his true identity, and in the extraordinary key of F sharp minor, with has been kept safely and secretly at the temple). a restless bass line, contrapuntal strings and an anguished voice part); the tyrant feels icy pangs At the other end of the spectrum, Handel’s bass of a belated moral conscience when he believes characters can mingle absurd comedy and it is too late to revoke his own order to execute his touching pathos. In Acis and Galatea (Cannons, innocent son Siroe. 1718), the monstrous Polyphemus cannot control his raging lust for the sea nymph Galatea (who Some of Handel’s later dramatic oratorios present is in love with the shepherd Acis) – and his initial the inconsolable mourning of grieving fathers. The attempt to be seductive is as implausible as it is debauched titular libertine in Belshazzar (1745) amusing. His accompanied recitative ‘I rage, I has – in a fit of jealousy – murdered the son of melt, I burn’ veers between fury and a hint of the Assyrian lord Gobrias. This has motivated melancholy with which any unrequited lover can Gobrias to become an ally of the Persian invader identify; calling for a wind instrument to be made Cyrus, whose army is camped outside the for him from ‘a hundred reeds of decent growth’, seemingly impregnable walls of Babylon. Before he intends to serenade Galatea, but Handel’s we witness the musical depiction of Belshazzar humour pokes affectionate fun at the disturbed hedonistically feasting from sacred vessels stolen Cyclops by making the supposedly huge ‘pipe’ from the temple of Jerusalem, and the ominous into a tiny sopranino recorder, ideal for the witty judgment of God’s writing on the wall, Gobrias caricature of clumsy attempts at love poetry (‘O has confided to the virtuous hero Cyrus that ruddier than the cherry, O sweeter than the berry’). he is continually ‘Opprest with never ceasing grief’. (Handel’s touching lament expresses Handel’s earlier setting of the same story for an the character’s hope that revenge will provide aristocratic Neapolitan wedding (Aci, Galatea succour, but, even after Belshazzar’s ignominious e Polifemo, 1708) is dissimilar musically and defeat, it transpires that no victory can truly structurally. Halfway through the serenata, compensate Gobrias for his loss.) Galatea eludes Polifemo’s unwanted advances by escaping into the sea, at which point the sorrowful The notion of morally upright treachery against monster sings ‘Fra l’ombre e gl’orrori’; rather than a wicked monarch is also explored in Athalia the hurly-burly of his Cannons counterpart, the (Oxford, 1733).