Handel - Song for St Cecilia's Day - Look Down, Harmonious Saint - Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 7

ID: DCD34110 (EAN: 801918341106)  | 1 CD | DDD - 24 b
Publi: 2012

LABEL:

DELPHIAN RECORDS

Collection:

Baroque

Subcollection:

Voices and Orchestra

Compositeurs:

HÄNDEL, Georg Friedrich

Orchestre

Ludus Baroque

Chef d'orchestre:

NEVILLE-TOWLE, Richard

Pour plus amples dtails:

Mary Bevan soprano
Ed Lyon tenor
Ludus Baroque
Richard Neville-Towle director

Following the widespread critical acclaim of their debut recording, Alexander's Feast, Ludus Baroque brings their celebrated verve to Handel's Song for St Cecilia's Day. Coupled with his miniature cantata for tenor, Look Down, Harmonious Saint, which Handel wrote to supplement performances of Alexander's Feast, and with the Concerto Grosso in B flat, written in his fruitful autumn of 1739, Handel approaches the setting of this second text by John Dryden with the same extraordinary vividness of detail and metrical virtuosity as Alexander's Feast. 'What passion cannot music raise and quell?' the answer is that it can raise and quell them all: martial, erotic, sacred ... but as music had, in the beginning, been the divine principle of cosmic order, so, on the Final Day, it will be the force that dissolves the universe.

Track listing

Ode for St Cecilia’s Day
1 Ouverture
2 From harmony, from heav’nly harmony
3 From harmony, from heav’nly harmony
4 What passion cannot music raise and quell?
5 The trumpet’s loud clangour
6 La Marche
7 The soft complaining flute
8 Sharp violins proclaim
9 But oh! what art can teach?
10 Orpheus could lead the savage race
11 But bright Cecilia rais’d the wonder high’r
12 As from the pow’r of sacred lays

Concerto Grosso in B flat Op. 6 No. 7
13 Largo - Allegro
14 Largo e Piano
15 Andante
16 Hornpipe

Look Down, Harmonious Saint
17 Look down, harmonious saint Musick! That all-persuading art Sweet accents all your numbers grace

Total playing time [79:55]

'fabulous line-up of soloists, fizzes with energy, sounding fresh of the page. Virtually ever Aria, clearly and beautifully articulated by the soloists, is a gem'
- Early Music Today

'this exuberant performance ... moves and inspires''
- Classic FM Magazine