Vivaldi - Gloria · Handel - Gloria · Dixit Dominus / English Baroque Soloists · Monteverdi Choir · Gardiner

Antonio Vivaldi (Artist), George Frideric Handel (Artist), John Eliot Gardiner (Artist), The Monteverdi Choir The English Baroque Soloists (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 13, 2001)
• SPARS Code: DDD
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Philips
• ASIN: B000050IU0
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #146,022 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

From International Record Review - subscribe now

The Gloria in excelsis Deo, recently announced as a newly discovered work by Handel, has actually been known to scholars for many years. Nobody paid it much attention until Professor Hans Joachim Marx of Hamburg University certified the piece as authentic while editing Handel's Latin church music for the ongoing Halle edition of the composer's works. Is it the genuine article? Anthony Hicks, in the excellent booklet notes, seems more judicious than some in his assessment. If it is Handel's, which he considers likely, then it may well belong to his teenage years in Halle, from which almost nothing survives save a Laudate pueri setting. Whatever its provenance, this is a most attractive little work, full of rewards for both performers and listeners.John Eliot Gardiner's interpretation, with Gillian Keith as soloist, has persuaded me of what I wasn't sure on hearing the first recording of the Gloria, that this is indeed authentic Handel. The brilliant acoustic, putting a burnish on the playing of the English Baroque Soloists, together with Keith's assured and sensitive handling of the vocal line throughout, enhances that sense of grand design – can we call it anything so prosaic as 'forward planning'? – at the heart of Handel's best works. It's much easier, too, on this version, to play the association game, with echoes from other pieces in the established canon – a cadence here, an incipit there, a phrase anticipating the Chandos Anthems, the Utrecht Te Deum or even the first English oratorios. Keith is as finely attuned as Gardiner to the interplay of exuberance and pensiveness here, Handel's 'allegro and penseroso' as it were, before he'd even read Milton's poems.This is a heart-stirring performance, which leads naturally to the Dixit Dominus, one of Handel's most demanding vocal works and in essence a tribute, when he'd barely got there, to what the travel brochures call 'the magic of Italy'. The piece, which may have been part of the so-called 'Carmelite Vespers' for which Handel is known to have furnished other compositions, is a stunning mixture of musical learning, homage to earlier styles, practical risk-taking and bold, dramatic effect. Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir do this sort of thing as easily as falling off a log. I'm never quite persuaded that the conductor sees Handel as much more than an inspired circus artist, pulling musical rabbits out of hats and doing operatic triple somersaults, but his approach is unfailingly attention-grabbing and makes us listen to the notes as well as the performers. Solos here are expertly taken by individual choir members and the instrumental sound has a grain and muscle to it which are ideally suited to the restless surge of Handel's invention.The disc begins with what will always be the most popular of Vivaldi's choral works, the Gloria, RV589, probably composed for a thanksgiving Mass for victories over the Turks. There's a fine swashbuckling quality to this performance, but Gardiner manages to avoid making Vivaldi's idiosyncratic musical language seem vulgar or naïve, unearthing the complexities beneath the apparent simplicity and directness of engagement. The pulse of individual movements is beautifully caught, especially in the bouncing 'Laudamus te' and the affecting dialogue of the 'Domine Deus'. Once again the acoustic is lavish, indeed thoroughly Baroque. The disc as a whole offers an excellent illustration of what that much-discussed word actually means in musical terms. Jonathan B. Keates

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I beg to disagree!, January 4, 2002

By 

"johnmonteverdi" (At my desk in Makati, Philippines) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vivaldi - Gloria · Handel - Gloria · Dixit Dominus / English Baroque Soloists · Monteverdi Choir · Gardiner (Audio CD)

I have Gardiner's old 1978 Gramophone winning recording of Dixit Dominus and it does sound more outgoing and in-your-face than this present recording...the choir being more "aggressive" sounding then, as if they were out to establish a name/reputation for themselves.

This recording is not "disdainful" or "languid!" Far from it! I have several choral conductor friends who appreciate the many subtleties of this recording over the 1978 version by Gardiner or the newer one from Minkowski. The string playing is outstanding...I guess John Eliot now has a deeper understanding of this work after 20 years! I would surmise that he understood that the work's tension not only rests on the voices of the singers and the choir, but also in the orchestral writing as well...listen to the tight crecendos in the string section in movement 5! It's menacing, jubilatory, tempered with enough balance of the intellect that keeps it from becoming "dull"

I see this recording as a valedictory one for John Eliot and his forces...a visionary who doesnt need to show off nor a conductor who's out to impress someone with loud voices and heavily accented/staccato readings(that was him a few decades ago!).

Get this record! Its wonderful stuff! But you also ought to get the 1978 recording of the Dixit Dominus (though it has less music in it, only Handel's Zadok the Priest is included).

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another valuable account of Handel's Gloria, June 17, 2002

By 

Simon Barrow (Exeter, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Vivaldi - Gloria · Handel - Gloria · Dixit Dominus / English Baroque Soloists · Monteverdi Choir · Gardiner (Audio CD)

Gillian Keith or Emma Kirby? That one will run and run, I imagine. Both this recording by Keith and John Eliot Gardiner and Emma Kirby's radiant performance on the premiere with Laurence Cummings and the Royal Academy of Music's Baroque Orchestra (BIS, June 2001) have much to commend them. For me, Kirby's experience puts her a little ahead, but by contrast Gardiner calls forth richer instrumental tones from his players. We now also have other choices. 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 Bach and Vivaldi 'Glorias'.

Unquestionably, Gardiner's thoughtful account of the 'Dixit Dominus' is to be preferred to the archive one from 1986 on the BIS CD. But why the Vivaldi? There are better versions out there, and Gardiner of all people would have been capable of coming up with another matching Handel offering - say a Motet like 'Saeviat tellus inter rigores' or the Psalm 'Nisi Dominus'.

Still, this is a worthwhile disc. Handel's 'Gloria' is new enough to the general listening public to require a variety of interpretations and approaches. For my money Kirby will remain the benchmark soloist, but Keith has offered a spirited response

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gardiner's Gloria is exquisite, December 23, 2004

By 

Peter Brawley - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Vivaldi - Gloria · Handel - Gloria · Dixit Dominus / English Baroque Soloists · Monteverdi Choir · Gardiner (Audio CD)

This is the most thoughtful, deeply spiritual account of Vivaldi's Gloria I've ever heard. Tempos are appropriately quick when they should be, slower and contemplative when they should be. The voices are supreme. The instruments are astonishingly rich. No trace of the brass-band kitsch that too many other versions fall into.

For lovers of the Vivaldi Gloria, a must-have.