Customer Reviews

Handel: Chandos Anthems, Vol. 1, Nos. 1, 2 & 3

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The felicity with which George Frideric Handel was able to compose in practically every genre never ceases to amaze me. After only five years (or, in at least one case, considerably less) in England, he was able to write some of the most delicious Anglican anthems on English psalm texts, works which can be considered as precursors of his later English oratorios and which demonstrate with wonderful clarity how the opera-composer Handel turned his expressive skills to the words of Scripture with wonderful effect. Harry Christophers turned to the so-called Chandos Anthems in 1987 when he recorded the first three anthems for the Chandos label (nomen es omen) in a production which can be considered a milestone in the discovery of Handel’s English-language works and which, some 17 years later, still meets all the criteria of a successful CD: brilliant, gloriously-captured soloists (among whom Lynne Dawson is rapturously outstanding, although Ian Partridge is not far behind), a superb twelve-voice choir with mature adult voices (Handel’s patron, the Duke of Chandos, had no alto voices available to him at the time), an original-instrument orchestra that in view of its small size and lack of violas does, within these limits, a grand job – and, of course, Chandos’s superb recorded sound, which enables one to hear every detail while maintaining the acoustic of the original recording venue. I found that listening via headphones was eminently satisfying, while it was, in particular, the choir that came over brilliantly via loudspeakers.

This is not the place to describe the music in detail; let it be said that it would be a waste of good music not to follow the text closely while listening, because Handel had a tremendous gift of imitating both nature and emotion while also maintaining suspense. Harry Christophers appears to have mastered these anthems in such a way that one can never tire of hearing them. Personally, they made me long for modern church music that takes the Word of God equally seriously and at the same time is able to bring over the spirit of faith and enthusiasm that Handel’s style exudes.