Customer Reviews

Handel: Streams of pleasure

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This is an excellent selection of works for soprano and mezzo drawn from Handel's English oratorios. Most of the duets are familiar choices, dazzlingly beautiful items from Theodora, Solomon, Belshazzar and Joshua. The solo arias go a little further afield, with selections from Joseph and his Brethren and Alexander Balus. This is a beautiful album, with one caveat: the singing style is more "operatic" than we are used to these days in recordings of Handel oratorio excerpts. This is not surprising, since both Karina Gauvin and Marie-Nicole Lemieux are veterans of Alan Curtis' ongoing complete Handel opera cycle, and tackle this music with a dramatic expressiveness (and a certain amount of vibrato) that is quite different from my benchmark in this repertory, the fabulous Carolyn Sampson/Robin Blaze "Great Oratorio Duets" with Nicholas Kraemer. This is not so much an objection as a matter of taste on my part, and I can't think of any reason why anyone who loves Handel's oratorios would not immediately rush out and buy this album. The sheer nerve of Marie-Nicole Lemieux to record "As with Rosy steps the Morn" from Theodora in the the footsteps of Lorraine Hunt's transcendent version, and making it her own, is worth the price of the disc.

Two ladies from Quebec - mezzo-soprano Marie-Nicole Lemieux and soprano Karina Gauvin in conjunction with Alan Curtis and his Complesso Barocco - bring one of the most beautifully constructed and performed recordings of the year. In order to completely enjoy this superb recording try watching the episodes on YouTube of the recording sessions, sessions which also include conversations between these two enormously gifted divas. They are both Quebecois, studied in the same school, and have performed together enough that they fully understand each other's voice. And the result is a blending of vocal production that is as perfect as any artists singing duets.

Much of the pleasure of this recording is the fact that the arias and duets selected by the artists (under the guiding hand of Alan Curtis) are all from Handel oratorios, but instead of a re-play of works included on every singer's recital these works are the lesser known arias and duets. The oratorios represented in this are Belshazzar, Theodora, Alexander Balus, Susanna, Judas Maccabaeus, Joshua, Joseph and His Brethren, Hercules, and Solomon. Not only are both singers in very fine form for these arias and duets, but they are accompanied by Alan Curtis and his Complesso Barocco, one of the most famous and renowned ensembles in the baroque music field.

One unsuspected benefit in this recital is the fact that the diction is so superb that one would never suspect that French is their native language. Some may say that the French vowel production adds to the immaculately tuned combination of voices singing together. Whatever the reasons many may find to be the magic key to the brilliance of this recital, it really is inconsequential information. The sound is beautiful and the spirit of Handel lives in the 'streams of pleasure' these two consummate artists performances. Grady Harp, October 11