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George Frideric Handel (1685 - 1759)

Solomon Oratorio (2 CDs)

Label: Harmonia Mundi, HMC 901949.50
Year: 2007

Performers:

Mark Padmore - tenor
David Wilson-Johnson - bass
Carolyn Sampson - soprano
Susan Gritton - soprano
Sarah Connolly - alto

Berlin RIAS Chamber Chorus
Academy for Ancient Music Berlin

Daniel Reuss - conductor

Handel was 63 years old when he composed Solomon, one of his final masterpieces. This monumental oratorio depicts the three highpoints of the biblical king’s life: the building of the temple, the famous judgment, and the visit of the Queen of Sheba. With a dramatic instinct keener than ever, the composer did not hesitate to combine political and patriotic reflections with exaltation of carnal love and celebration of earthly riches. This ‘perfect marriage of music and English words’, as Winton Dean has called it, caused the composer serious financial difficulties in 1749 on account of the exceptional forces it required – but today, under the baton of Daniel Reuss, it finds performers totally devoted to its noble cause!

Well, it's happened again--another reference-recording shake-up. This new Solomon from Daniel Reuss, the RIAS Kammerchor, and Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin is now the one to own, and unless you're a collector of these things, the only one you'll need. And that's not to diminish the achievements of Gardiner or of the recent McGegan live production on Carus, but this performance and recording are so dynamic and vibrant, so present and powerful that you can't help but be swept up in the sheer glory and grandeur of one of Handel's greatest scores. Yes, Gardiner's 1984 Philips recording remains impressive, especially for the clarity and detail of the orchestra and the consistently strong, committed performances by all concerned; but this one is even more magnificent, the soloists just a notch more attuned to the drama, while the chorus and orchestra go beyond the performance of a series of "numbers" to really inhabit the scenes and effectively impart the character and mood of the story.
Sarah Connolly, who's already made her mark as a Handel singer, here an alto, elsewhere a mezzo (type Q10090 and Q8177 in Search Reviews), is one of the more commanding, darker-voiced Solomons on disc (the part was written for a mezzo), and she delivers the role with a confident, thoughtful, respectfully theatrical air that's always mindful of the character while fully exploiting Handel's abundant opportunities for purely lovely musical expression. And speaking of "lovely musical expression", Susan Gritton's "Beneath the vine, or fig-tree's shade", near the end of Act 2, is among the most beautifully sung Handel arias you'll ever hear, a show-stopping performance that you'll just have to repeat once or twice before moving on to the following chorus.
All the while, Daniel Reuss shows his affinity for this score by his absolutely "right" management of tempo and flow, of rhythmic cadence, of sonority and dynamic gradation. The contrasts--between, say, the aforementioned "Beneath the vine...", one of Handel's heart-rending gems, and the work's final, rousing chorus--are real and purposeful. The choruses--and these are some of Handel's finest--are properly inflected and sung with requisite technical discipline joined with the sort of buoyant, open-hearted spirit that's bound up in nearly everything Handel wrote, but that's rarely so affectingly realized. The same must be said of this excellent orchestra's performance, and it's all complemented by ideally balanced, vibrant, room-filling sound. This is one of those recordings that from the opening moments assures you that you won't be going anywhere--it's that good, it's that compelling, and it's absolutely essential.

Premiered at Covent Garden in March 1749, Solomon is arguably the richest, certainly the most protean, of Handel's oratorios. With its hieratic double choruses, it is on one level a sumptuous pageant: a glorification of kingship (the contrast with the boorish, unloved George II could hardly have been more pointed) and an idealised golden age of peace, piety and prosperity. The pictorially conceived masque conjured for the visiting Queen of Sheba is a Cecilian-style celebration of the power of music, with Solomon evoking the various "passions" like the minstrel Timotheus in Alexander's Feast.
As a counterpoise to the work's pomp and opulence, several of the solo numbers - say, Solomon's "What though I trace each herb and flow'r?", the first harlot's musette-lullaby "Beneath the vine", or Sheba's nostalgic "Will the sun forget to streak?" - are suffused with an almost pantheistic ecstasy (shades here of the Miltonic ode L'Allegro). The love scene between Solomon - here a model of monogamy rather than the incontinent womaniser of biblical fame - and his queen is Handel at his most sensuous, culminating in the ravishing so-called "Nightingale" chorus. While the outer acts are in essence a series of vivid tableaux, Handel the dramatist is to the fore in the judgement scene, a masterpiece of psychological penetration that climaxes in an aria of piercing beauty and emotional truth for the rightful mother. In his pioneering Handel's Dramatic Oratorios and Masques (OUP: 1959), Winton Dean advocated the excision of several arias (mainly for the priestly figures of Zadok and the Levite) and the replacement of the closing chorus by the monumental "Praise the Lord" - a policy followed by John Eliot Gardiner (Philips), though not by the completist Paul McCreesh (Archiv). In his new recording, Daniel Reuss ditches the final chorus, though he omits just two arias, neither lamented. He also makes puzzling internal cuts in the duet for Solomon and the first harlot, and, more damagingly, the gorgeous opening number of the masque.
That said, I enjoyed the Harmonia Mundi recording almost unreservedly. Abetted by his crack period orchestra and 40_strong chorus, Reuss is responsive alike to the oratorio's ceremonial splendour and its fragrant pastoral tinta. The versions by Gardiner and McCreesh, balanced rather more in favour of the voices, generate an extra weight and sonorous magnificence in the great double choruses. But the vitality and refinement of the Berlin choir is always compelling. With terrific controlled raucousness from antiphonal wind and brass, the opening chorus of Act 2 is as elementally thrilling as it should be. At the other extreme, the Nightingale chorus, taken slowly and secretively, is at least the equal of McCreesh's in drowsy amorous enchantment.
Where the earlier recordings each have at least one unsatisfactory soloist, Reuss's solo line-up could hardly be bettered. Handel cast the role of Solomon with a mezzo-soprano. Reuss does likewise with Sarah Connolly, who sings with glowing, even tone, ardour (in the love scene), and rapt inwardness in Solomon's two "nature" arias. Susan Gritton makes a gently sensuous queen (her musing "With thee th'unshelter'd moor I'd tread" a highlight) and probes the full poignancy and anguish of the first harlot's music. While yielding to Della Jones (Gardiner) and Susan Bickley (McCreesh) in sheer venom, Carolyn Sampson characterises with gusto as the second harlot, and beautifully softens her bright, vernal tone in "Will the sun forget to streak?" The priests are in the expert hands of Mark Padmore (exemplary in his bouts of coloratura) and the gravely sonorous David Wilson-Johnson.
Nicholas McGegan's live Dresden Solomon differs most obviously from Reuss's in being absolutely complete. Pace Winton Dean, I have a soft spot for the final chorus, a witty jeu d'esprit that initially sounds like a parody of the Nightingale chorus. McGegan does this with delightful nonchalance. Elsewhere he directs his responsive orchestra with his customary rhythmic verve and feeling for the grand gesture. He uses an all_male choir, as Handel himself did, often with memorable results, though the Frauenkirche's vast, resonant acoustic tends to mute the impact of the Winchester trebles in the antiphonal choruses.
Though they could make more of their words, McGegan's sopranos are both fine (Dominique Labelle, with her not unattractive fast vibrato, is especially moving as the first harlot); and Roderick Williams sings with warm, firm tone as the Levite. But I couldn't work up much enthusiasm for Michael Slattery's gusty Zadok or, crucially, for Tim Mead's pleasant but pallidly characterised Solomon, sung as if from the cathedral stalls. There are many good things here. But if you want this magnificent work complete, McCreesh's is the version to go for, while for consistently glorious Handel singing the new Harmonia Mundi recording, impressively directed by Reuss, takes the palm.

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