Customer Reviews

Handel: Gloria; Dixit Dominus / Kirkby * Royal Academy of Music Baroque Orchestra * Cummings

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Emma Kirby's radiant performance on the premiere recording of Handel's rediscovered 'Gloria' is well worth the entrance price. The Royal Academy's Baroque Orchestra also give a strong performance, albeit one lacking the richer tones of John Eliot Gardiner's period ensemble on the Philips (462 597-2) recording which appeared a couple of months later. By Handel's standards this a fairly straight setting of a traditional text, but all the expected flourishes, trills, sustains and extended runs are there to add the colour we would expect. The outcome is a splendid combination of required simplicity and appropriate elaboration.

Gardiner's 'Dixit Dominus' is superior to the well-known archive one on this recording, which comes across a little flat. It would have been good if the Academy could have produced a third Handel work to supplement the 'Gloria' - perhaps a Motet like 'Saeviat tellus inter rigores' or the Psalm 'Nisi Dominus'. Gardiner tags on the Vivaldi 'Gloria' instead. But it is something of a curious afterthought, and given the choice of the two I would definitely plump for this CD if it is the Handel you are after.

A couple of other recordings have become available since this release and the Philips one. The Gottingen Handel Festival Edition is a live recording from their 3 June 2001 gala performance with Dominique Labelle, soprano, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and conductor Nicholas McGegan. And the Baroque Academy of Montreal offer another period instrument rendition on Atma Classique (ACD2 2215), accompanied by the Bach and Vivaldi settings. However, Emma Kirby remains the benchmark.

A glowing review in a Sunday Chicago Tribune caught my eye and inspired me to seek out this CD and I'm very happy that I did. Every word of praise issued for the production is highly merited. The singers excel, the sound swells... it is pure sound.

Forget Mozart for productivity-inspiring background music, this is it! That sounds a little like, "oh, you can put it on and forget about it," but that's not it. It just fills you with calm and lets you tap into the productive side of your brain. Don't know how or why, it just does!

I have loved Emma Kirby's voice since I first heard her live in 1980 here in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was the soprano soloist in a rather revolutionary performance of Handel's "Messiah". The whole chrous,orchestra,and the soloists totaled about 40 performers. It was wonderful to be part of such a small chorus and to perform with soloists as wonderful as Ms. Kirkby.

Here we have her wonderful pure voice with tremendous facility and expressiveness. While the pieces total only 16 minutes or so, what wonderful minutes they are! You simply owe it to yourself to hear her sing this.

The "Dixit Dominus" is a piece I was unfamiliar with and found myself absolutely captivated by it. Track 14 is a wonderful piece with four soloists and chorus that is Handel at his most unbuttoned. I find myself listening it to it over and over again with haunted delight.

This is the kind of music that stays in your head and heart and you find yourself trying to hum it as you listen to it run through your mind. Just great!

Just heard this on the radio (NPR). Fell in love with Emma Kirkby's voice. Had to sit fifteen minutes in my car outside the office to get the whole thing. A lovely piece of Handel, newly discovered, but for me it's the voice. I'm no classical connoisseur, and rarely hear a soprano I really go for. Will be looking at her other recordings now.

I have heard quite a few recordings of Dixit Dominus (Scholars Baroque Ensemble, The Sixteen, Monteverdi Choir, Les Musiciens de Louvre), and I have to say this one is the best. This group obviously understands the key to taming this beast of a choral piece: tempi are not rushed but firm, which allow them to manifest in nice, incisive pitches in the melismas. I don't have to wince at flat tones (and neither do you)! But fear not, they have plenty of vocal athleticism to show for in the fast, final Et in saecula saeculorum. The odd thing is that this seems to be the only extant recording of the choir. Oh, and Emma Kirkby ain't half bad in the Gloria.

It's wonderful that we still occasionally see works by long-dead masters being discovered during our lifetime. This newly-discovered Handelian 'Gloria' may not set the world on fire, but it's still a fine work, and Emma Kirkby does her usual stylistic interpretation with aplomb. At times her vocal production seems a little too "forward in the head" but I guess that's a beautiful thing to some.

I bought the disk because I've always been a huge fan of 'Dixit Dominus', written by Handel when he was only 22, and a very appealing work indeed. While this is not the greatest rendition I have heard, it is still well-worth the purchase price. Some of the solo singing is just exquisite, and the ensemble lines are tight and vigorous.

Just a wee complaint: 'De Torrente in Via' is marked Adagio, but this seems to clip along at a fair pace, which somewhat robs the glorious soprano duet suspensions of their power. However, this is a minor gripe, and this recording often gets played in my house.

The words of a tyro and a pro: I'm the tyro. I (sort of) sing tenor in church and for a local Gilbert and Sullivan-based light opera company. My daughter is the pro. She's a student of grand opera, has been singing publicly since age five.

We heard the "Gloria" whilst running errands and we actually stopped to listen to it. I'm a Beethoven type of guy ("you feel it viscerally or you don't feel it at all") but my daughter digs way deep into technique, and declared Ms. Kirkby a rare talent who can make it sound easy. Make what sound easy? Well, Mr. Handel treats his audiences well by brutalizing his singers. Ms. Kirkby sounds like she's having fun (And should something called "Gloria" be anything else?) I'll leave to those better qualified the technical reasons why you should buy this disk. I'll just make the subjective promise that it'll knock your socks off.

Cheers

Handel: Gloria; Dixit Dominus / Kirkby * Royal Academy of Music Baroque Orchestra * Cummings is a recording under the direction of Swedish conductor Anders Ohrwall who leads the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble on this BIS Records AB recording from 2001. We also get the hear the amazing alto Anne Sofie Von Otter. The booklet contains 30 pages and we get liner-notes written by Ingemar Von Heijne. We also get short biographies of the performers and some few photograhs from the time of the recording. Highly recommended. 5/5.