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Tim Mead, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, François Lazarevitch – Purcell: Songs (2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:06:08 minutes | 1,29 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, guided by François Lazarevitch’s virtuoso flute, have already led us along the roads of Ireland and Scotland, notably the High Road to Kilkenny (ALPHA 234), a great success in 2016. This time, they venture into England with an essentially secular programme devoted to Henry Purcell (1659-95), varying the mood by alternating between instrumental dances and songs performed by the English countertenor Tim Mead, including ‘O Solitude’ and ‘What power art thou’. While Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien have chosen these celebrated pieces for pleasure above all, with this English programme they also fill in a new piece in their jigsaw map of the United Kingdom. At the same time, they demonstrate the musical porosity of Ireland, Scotland and England – and the atypical colours of the small string ensemble complemented by two flutes, a harp and harpsichord/lute continuo further underline the fact. The common thread, dear to Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, is that of folk music lying at the heart of art music, in a mixture of origins, practices and repertories. We can easily recognise ‘Scotch and Irish tunes’ that Purcell incorporates in his overtures, jigs, hornpipes and chaconnes. The countertenor Tim Mead punctuates the dances with songs composed for the operatic or dramatic stage or for chamber performance.
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Louise Alder, Tim Mead, Anna Stéphany, Stuart Jackson, Adam Plachetka, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen – Handel: Theodora, HWV 60 (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:58:27 minutes | 3,30 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Among Handel’s seventeen English oratorios, Theodora (1750) is unique. The story is not taken from the Bible, but is about a Christian martyr. The characteristics of the oratorio are very negative: there is no national triumph and does not end in joy, hero and heroine are dying, the community with which the audience identifies is in mortal danger, and the final chorus is in a minor key. As a musical drama, this work can be seen as a direct ancestor of the “Dialogues des Carmélites”. At the age of 65, Handel created a work that was too radical and complex for most of his listeners at that time. Today, Theodora is regarded as a dramatic oratorio that is both deeply stimulating and powerfully moving as an “opera for the thinking person”.
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La Nuova Musica, David Bates, Tim Mead, Fleur Barron, Giulia Semenzato, Nicky Spence – Purcell: Dido and Aeneas (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 57:31 minutes | 1,14 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © PentaTone
La Nuova Musica is one of the most versatile performing groups of its kind.
We strive to reveal new aspects of familiar repertoire, expose lesser-known works from the Baroque and Classical periods and showcase new commissions through dynamic performances and recordings.
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Lucy Crowe, Tim Mead, La Nuova Musica and David Bates – Pergolesi: Stabat Mater – Bach: Cantatas BWV 54, 170 (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:14 minutes | 1,09 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © harmonia mundi
Handel wrote little for his native tongue, but what he did demonstrates a particular level of contemplative piety while still employing the familiar techniques of Italian opera. Praise for the beauty of nature and eternal life are the subjects of the sacred poems by his contemporary Barthold Heinrich Brockes which Handel set to music in his ‘Nine German Arias’. Each aria celebrates an aspect of nature, from the beauty of a flaming rose to the sweetness of silence, with extraordinary tenderness and sincerity. In these nine pieces for soprano and a small group of instruments, to be chosen at will, Handel drew often on music from his own operas, albeit with the voice part in the German arias adapted to be less virtuosic and more deeply expressive. The musical relationships with Handel s opera arias are evident in the ingenuity of his characterisation and the expressive, articulate melodies with which the soprano and the violin obbligato create their vivid images. The young German soprano Marie Friederike Schöder is accompanied in her beautiful interpretation of the arias by the specialist ensemble Batzdorfer Hofkapelle.
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Tim Mead, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen – Sacroprofano (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:12:03 minutes | 1,35 GB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Alpha Classics
Although he already has a rich stage and recording career behind him, this is Tim Mead’s first solo album. ‘Juxtaposing the sacred and secular aspects of Vivaldi’s work, this programme explores the earthly passion of the divine and the heavenly beauty of love’, says the English countertenor. ‘When they are placed side by side, his highly individual approach reveals that these two worlds are closely intertwined, in music at once astonishing and highly virtuosic.’ With his partners from Arcangelo, directed by Jonathan Cohen, we hear him in the famous Nisi Dominus and the no less celebrated cantata Cessate, omai, cessate, alongside the Salve Regina RV618 and Amor, hai vinto.
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Tim Mead, Anna Dennis, Mary Bevan, Hilary Summers – Handel: Amadigi di Gaula (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 02:36:47 minutes | 2,65 GB | Genre: Classical, Opera
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Chandos
The countertenor Tim Mead leads an all-star cast in the Early Opera Company’s recording of Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula, conducted by Christian Curnyn.
The opera was first performed, in London, in 1715, in the first season under the reign of George I, at the King’s Theatre on the Haymarket. The complex, twisting plot features the lovers Amadigi and Oriana, imprisoned by the sorceress Melissa (who seeks Amadigi’s love). His ally Dardano turns against Amadigi, his former friend, when he realises that they both love Oriana and he sides with Melissa. Her plans are repeatedly foiled, and true love triumphs at the final curtain!
Amadigi is considered the finest of Handel’s early London operas in terms of musical sophistication, theatrical pacing, and a perfectly balanced exploration of the interconnected relationships, motivations, and emotional divergences among just four dissimilar yet equally arresting characters.
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