Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Handel: Esther HWV 50a, First reconstructable version (Cannons), 1720 (2012) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Handel: Esther HWV 50a, First reconstructable version (Cannons), 1720 (2012)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:39:38 minutes | 1,92 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Linn Records

Named the 11th Greatest Choir by Gramophone, the Dunedin Consort has established a reputation as the finest single-part period performance choir currently performing. The Dunedin Consort’s highly anticipated new recording of Esther is the third recording in its hugely successful Handel series. The Consort has set the bar high for this Handel performance with a Gramophone Award in 2007 for Messiah and a BBC Radio 3 ‘Building a Library’ First Choice accolade for Acis and Galatea. For Esther, director John Butt has reunited his award-winning team of soloists, Susan Hamilton, Nicholas Mulroy, Matthew Brook and Thomas Hobbs, plus well-known guest soloists Robin Blaze and James Gilchrist.

Somewhere between a masque and a fully fledged oratorio, Esther is a problematic work. John Arbuthnot’s adaptation of Racine’s play is ill-proportioned and leaves too many lacunae in the narrative, while Handel’s music, liberally pilfered from his Brockes-Passion, can mesh uncomfortably with character and action. After the intimacy of the first two acts, the brass-festooned splendour of the Jewish choruses in Act 3 seems to belong to a different work. In a way it does. Recent research by John Roberts has revealed that Esther went through two stages: a version of 1718, now lost, composed for the same chamber forces as Acis and Galatea; and an expanded revision of 1720, taking advantage of the newly enlarged forces at Cannons, the Duke of Chandos’s Palladian mansion in what was then rural Edgware. Whatever its faults as drama, Esther does contain some superb music, especially for the chorus and the characters who most fired Handel’s imagination: the Persian King Assuerus (married to the Jewess Esther) and his henchman Haman, intent on a Jewish massacre. For this recording John Butt has drawn on Roberts’s research to create an edition that differs in various minor ways from the versions recorded by Hogwood and Christophers. Inter alia, the action is, convincingly, divided into three acts rather than six scenes, and a flute, indicated in Handel’s autograph, is added to the harp obbligato in the aria ‘Praise the Lord’. As on his recordings of Acis and Galatea and Messiah, Butt’s direction combines spontaneous freshness with a care for expressive phrasing and precise colouring. The 11-strong chorus—the solo cast plus reinforcements—is vital and incisive, packing a fair punch even in the ceremonial final chorus.

Of the soloists, James Gilchrist’s characteristically intense, involved Assuerus and Matthew Brook’s baleful Haman are at least a match for their counterparts on the rival recordings. Indeed, Brook’s noble singing of Haman’s (futile) plea for mercy to Esther and his admonitory final aria give the oratorio’s villain a near-tragic grandeur. Thomas Hobbs sings ‘Tune your harps’ gracefully, abetted by the eloquent oboist Alexandra Bellamy; and the more robust, baritonal Nicholas Mulroy makes his mark in Mordecai’s solo. Robin Blaze, though, sounds off form as the Priest. More seriously, Susan Hamilton’s shallow, girlish tones are simply inadequate for Esther’s vehement riposte to Haman’s plea for his life. Any venom here comes courtesy of the strings. So much in Butt’s carefully prepared performance feels exactly right. Yet reservations about Blaze and, especially, Hamilton tip my preference towards either of the rival versions, with Christophers shading it for his superior choral singing and more even cast of soloists. –Gramophone

The sort of questions about texts and sources that keep scholars awake at night is probably Mogadon to the casual listener. But Handel’s Esther, his first ‘English’ oratorio, is a minefield into which John Butt enters brandishing a new edition.

Anyone already owning the Harry Christophers mid-1990s recording of the 1718 version with The Sixteen and the Symphony of Harmony and Invention needn’t necessarily be alarmed by the appearance of the usurper. The date has always been problematic. A viola interpolation aside, Butt’s three-act division can be achieved by pausing Christophers’s disc before ‘Jehovah, crowned with glory bright’, by losing an aria, and reversing the order of another and its recitative. The more crucial difference rests in the scale of the two recordings—Christophers’s chamber choir and slightly larger orchestral forces, versus the small-vocal-ensemble approach the Dunedins have championed in discs of Bach and Handel’s Acis and Galatea.

Paradoxically, a two-voices-to-a-part achieves more immediacy than a larger choir, coupled with a stylish and delightfully intimate band. Yet again, Butt demonstrates that less can be more. With soloists drawn from a distinguished consort including tenor James Gilchrist, countertenor Robin Blaze and soprano Susan Hamilton, the ear-catcher turns out to be bass-baritone Mathew Brook’s Hamam: a ‘bad guy’ whose Act III accompagnato would win over the most hardened of juries. Tenor Thomas Hobb’s mellifluous ‘Tune your harps’ plucks plaintive heartstrings too. –BBC Music Magazine

Tracklist:
01. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Overture – I. Andante (01:58)
02. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Overture – II. Larghetto (02:35)
03. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Overture – III. Allegro (02:26)
04. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 1 – I. Recitative: ‘Tis greater far to spare, than to destroy (00:41)
05. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 1 – II. Air: Pluck root and branch from out the land (01:59)
06. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 1 – III. Recitative: Our souls with ardour glow (00:07)
07. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 1 – IV. Chorus: Shall we the God of Israel’s fear? (01:51)
08. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 2 – I. Recitative: Now persecution shall lay by her iron rod (00:16)
09. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 2 – II. Air: Tune your harps to cheerful strains (04:21)
10. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 2 – III. Chorus: Shall we of servitude complain (01:24)
11. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 2 – IV. Recitative: O God, who from the suckling’s mouth (00:16)
12. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 2 – V. Air: Praise the Lord with cheerful noise (05:38)
13. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 2 – VI. Chorus: Shall we of servitude complain (01:24)
14. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 3 – I. Recitative: How have our sins provok’d the Lord (01:05)
15. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 3 – II. Chorus: Ye sons of Israel mourn (01:52)
16. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 3 – III. Air: O Jordan, Jordan, sacred tide (07:42)
17. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act One, Scene 3 – IV. Chorus: Ye sons of Israel mourn (02:09)
18. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 1 – I. Recitative: Why sits that sorrow on thy brow? (01:02)
19. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 1 – II. Recitative: Why sits that sorrow on thy brow? (04:25)
20. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 1 – III. Recitative: I go before the king to stand (00:13)
21. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 1 – IV. Air: Tears assist me, pity moving (02:50)
22. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 1 – V. Chorus: Save us, O Lord (01:27)
23. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 2 – I. Recitative: Who dares intrude into our presence without our leave? (01:09)
24. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 2 – II. Duet: Who calls my parting soul from death? (02:46)
25. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 2 – III. Air: O beauteous Queen, unclose those eyes! (07:18)
26. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 2 – IV. Recitative: If I find favour in thy sight (00:19)
27. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 2 – V. Air: How can I stay, when love invites? (03:08)
28. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 2 – VI. Recitative: With inward joy his visage glows (00:15)
29. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Two, Scene 2 – VII. Chorus: Virtue, truth and innocence (02:42)
30. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Three, Scene 1 – I. Air: Jehovah crown’d with glory bright (01:57)
31. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Three, Scene 1 – II. Chorus: He comes, He comes to end our woes (04:17)
32. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Three, Scene 2 – I. Recitative: Now, O Queen, they suit declare (01:38)
33. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Three, Scene 2 – II. Accompagnato: Turn not, O Queen, thy face away (02:36)
34. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Three, Scene 2 – III. Air: Flatt’ring tongue, no more I hear thee! (04:52)
35. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Three, Scene 2 – IV. Recitative: Guards, seize the traitor, bear him hence! (00:40)
36. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Three, Scene 2 – V. Air: How art thou fall’n from thy height! (06:10)
37. Dunedin Consort, John Butt – Act Three, Scene 2 – VI. Chorus: The Lord our enemy has slain (11:56)

Personnel:
Dunedin Consort
John Butt, conductor
Ashley Turnell, tenor
Electra Lochhead, soprano
Robin Blaze, countertenor
Susan Hamilton, soprano
Nicholas Mulroy, tenor
Matthew Brook, bass
Robert Davies, bass
James Gilchrist, tenor
Thomas Hobbs, tenor

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