Handel Great Oratorio Duets BIS SACD-1436

Carolyn Sampson, soprano, Robin Blaze, counter tenor,
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Nicholas Kraemer, director

Recorded at St Paul’s Church, New Southgate, January 2005
Producer: Ingo Petry. Engineer: Marian Schwebel
UK Release: April 3, 2006.

Great Oratorio Duets

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Shortlisted for:

Gramophone Awards 2006 Best Recital

BBC Radio 3 CD Review Disc of the Year 2006

Press

Gramophone, December 2006

Recording I'd like to give:

I feel confident that the lovingly selected and beautifully sung Handel recital from Carolyn Sampson and Robin Blaze would give pleasure to any music-loving loved one.(Lindsay Kemp)

American Record Guide, July/August 2006.

Handel

‘Great Oratorio Duets’

Single-disc programs of arias from Handel’s Italian operas or oratorios—or mixes of both—are quite common. Only lately have singers and record producers become aware of the duets. A start has been made on examples from the operas, at first quite timidly and partly in a somewhat mislabelled program of “Handel Love Duets” (mostly arias, in fact) sung by Suzie Leblanc and Daniel Taylor for Atma (2260;N/D 2003), but more substantially in the excellent anthology “Amor e gelosia: Handel Operatic Duets” superbly delivered by Patrizia Ciofi and Joyce Di Donato for Virgin (45628; S/O 2004).

Now, at last, someone has directed attention to the counterpart material in the oratorios. In this very generous assemblage we have a total of 18 duets drawn from ten full oratorios ( Jeptha, Joshua, Belshazzar, Susanna, Theodora, Soloman, Saul, Deborah, Alexander Balus, and Esther) plus two odes (the early Eternal Source of Light Divine for the birthday of Queen Anne; and Alexander’s Feast).

Gramophone, May 2006.

Gramophone, May 2006.

Handel

‘Great Oratorio Duets’

A mouthwatering partnership in music of tenderness and theatricality

‘Great Oratorio Duets’? It seems a strange concept at first – not many of these pieces have made an individual name for themselves just yet. But then the point of this disc is evidently to bring together in mouthwatering partnership two of the most dulcet-voiced young Baroque singers Britain has to offer, and it does not take long to discover that that is a very good idea indeed. Carolyn Sampson’s voice is bright and clear yet warmed by judiciously selected and moderated vibrato, while Robin Blaze has a more distinctively tangy sound, but they fit each other well and in their faultless display of Handelian style, lyricism and warmth they are in total mental and spiritual accord.

The music, meanwhile, does indeed have greatness. The vocal tyle of Handel’s English oratorios does not recreat the virtuoso flashness of the Italian operas but speaks in a more direct, lyrical manner, expressing with unimpeachable honesty all the sympathy and human understanding for which their composer is so revered. The majority here are love duets, but with what variety, from carefree (examples from Jeptha and Susanna) to chaste (Deborah) to ambiguously melancholy (Joshua and Saul. The forgiveness duet from Esther is indescribably tender (especially in this performance), the duet from Saul in which love-drunk David is reluctant to leave when warned by his fiancée of approaching danger is effortlessly theatrical, and the two duets for the doomed lovers from Theodora are works of pure and noble genius. If the performances in these last do not quite reach the heartbreaking intensity of which Peter Sellars’s Glyndebourne production proved them capable, it is hard to see how that could ever be achieved in a recital; Sampson and Blaze surely manage as well as anyone ever could. With intelligent, kind-hearted accompaniments freom Nicholas Kraemer and the OAE, this is a truly beautiful Handel recording, a disc to give pleasure for years to come. (Lindsay Kemp)

Classic FM Magazine, May 2006.

Early Music Today, April/May 2006.