Word: handels
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...Handel oratorio is almost too much fun; it's just so easy to bellow out that "good old Handel," the louder the better, and let artistry go hang. It takes work to make a concert performance of Handel significantly more than an exercise in sight-reading. The Glee Club, Choral Society, and Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra supplied the necessary work last night. They made things "happen" in Israel in Egypt; conductor Elliot Forbes took good advantage of the vocal discipline which the choruses maintained...
...already recorded 350 of Domenico Scarlatti's 555 sonatas, and the demand for his records has pushed him into some of the worst harpsichord music ever written: "First we did the flute and harpsichord sonatas of Bach. They went well, so we did the sonatas of Handel-which are bad Bach. They sold; so next we did the sonatas of Telemann-bad Handel. Then came the works of Frederick the Great-which are awful Telemann. We even considered the music of Frederick's sister Amelia-terrible Frederick the Great...
...players who trail behind the furniture van in a chauffeur-driven station wagon. Wandering from town to town, playing for anybody, the group has worked its way through the sonatas, preludes and choir introductions of J. S. Bach, all the organ music ever written by Mozart, the works of Handel and of both the Haydns, Franz Joseph and his brother Johann Michael...
...still not worth buying. Sir Adrian chose Miss Joan Sutherland as his soprano soloist, and it was a noble choice, but, unfortunately, Sir Adrian is a man who thinks that Miss Sutherland can only sing well when she is singing Puccini (a palpable falsehood). Consequently, Sir A. has ripped Handel's oratorio untimely from its century, making it as operatic Victorian as he possibly can. The result is an orchestra sprawling and unkempt, singers bawling and dyspeptic, and tempi crawling and inept. (London A-4357--you'll recognize the album by the ugly crucifix on its cover...
Excitement was missing, too, from the 18th century arias with which Miss Berganza opened her recital: she sang them very nicely indeed (except for a disastrous trill in Handel's Lascia ch'io pianga), but instead of the grand manner and absolute command of style so necessary for Alessandro Scarlatti or Cherubini, she provided a good deal of hand-clasping and those imploring looks to the heavens which ought to be banned forever from the concert stage. In Rossini's Non Piu mesta (from La Cenerentola)--and Miss Berganza has something of a reputation as a Rossini specialist--one again...