Messiah, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh

Conrad Wilson
Published on 28 Dec 2009

A dozen singers and a handful of instrumentalists, if they are the right ones and you hear them in a building such as the Queen’s Hall, are all you need for Messiah.

That is the way the Dunedin Consort performs and it is usually – although not invariably – a success. Last year’s shift to a different Edinburgh location was a mistake, but when everything works, or almost does, the effect goes far beyond that of an annual ritual.

Last week, everything was just right. Out of four soloists, eight vocally individual choristers, 10 attentive strings and a few extras, John Butt carved the gentlest, sweetest, most joyous and poignant of performances which never short changed the music and ensured it could flood the hall with the purest, clearest tone.

Facial expression and body movement were the visual product of the music itself. Who needs to make an opera out of Messiah when Handel can be presented like this?

Susan Hamilton, Clare Wilkinson, Nicholas Mulroy and Robert Davies were the soloists, and the fact that they looked at each other, and that the choristers (also at the front of the platform) could look at them as well, added to the nature of the event in the same way as the strings, with their crunched cadences, provided more than an accompaniment.

No need, on this occasion, to single out specific arias or choruses. They all played their part, from the first floating notes of Mulroy’s “Comfort Ye” to the glowing flow of the closing Amen.

Star rating: *****

Kelso Music Society

Friday 20th November

Ancient met modern in the Dunedin Consort’s concert on Friday last at Kelso Music Society in a very entertaining programme.  The well-known Edinburgh based group consisted of five singers under the leadership and direction of Susan Hamilton.   In the first half they sang William Byrd’s famous 16th century Mass for Five Voices which was interspersed with some Scottish Renaissance motets which lent a secular edge to the liturgy of the Mass.  The strangeness of the motet by Robert Carver anticipated very effectively the second half which provided a wide range of part songs from the nineteenth century, with works by Sterndale Bennett and Arthur Sullivan – a beautifully mournful song – to four elegantly crafted part songs by Thea Musgrave, a very distinguished Scottish composer, on a lover’s progress freeing himself from ‘love’s snare’, with words by Sir Thomas Wyatt. Debussy followed, some wonderfully evocative settings to words by Charles d’Orleans about love and youth and the seasons.  And then the Dunedins performed a series of songs written for them by Paul Mottram on the various characters who had successfully or unsuccessfully tried to cross the Niagara Falls on a tight rope, to fall over them in a barrel, to dive into them, and to swim across them.  They were 6 poems by John Greening each one given a different construction and each one providing a very individual, amusing and evocative commentary on the perilous escapades.

The singing, as ever with the Dunedins, was of the very highest order and they made perfect sense of the poetry of the songs.  The Byrd Mass could have benefited from a more resonant acoustic than the school hall now offers since its summer refurbishment but it was interesting to see how closely the modern part song form relates to its 16th century precedents.

We wish the Dunedins success with their imminent recording of the Bach B minor Mass and hope it reaches the exalted heights of their previous recordings.

Peter Podmore

Gramophone

December 2008
Gramophone
David Vickers

Handel's Acis & Galatea has been recorded often, but the original version written for small-scale performance by only five singers (soprano, three tenors and bass) and a small band at Cannons in 1718 has almost never been properly revived owing to blind trust of poor editions, a preference for using composite (or compromised) versions, mucking about with the scoring, a desire to use full chorus, missing out the third tenor character, Coridon, or sheer uninterest in doing extra homework. This beggars belief because the Cannons version text makes more dramatic sense and the musical scale of it is charming. It is certainly among Handel's most perfect creations. Thankfully, John Butt has researched the performing conditions and text of the Cannons Acis. The philological aspects are impeccable, and, better still, the performance is utterly magical.

The Sinfonia brims with unforced personality, after which the pastoral chorus "O the pleasure of the plains" is relaxed, with the oboes given enough space to weave their initiative lines clearly. The five singers and the band are beautifully in proportion with each other, and Linn's sound recording is stunningly good. Susan Hamilton's light, articulate soprano is preferable to an operatic voice in the role of Galatea: her rendition of "Hush, ye pretty warbling choir" is notable for its affectionate delicacy, and she smoothly navigates the deceptively tricky leaps in "As when the dove". Nicholas Mulroy's Acis is resonant and suave, combining muscularity and elegance. In "Love in her eyes sits playing" the Dunedin Players sound as expansive and sonorous as any larger Baroque orchestra. The madrigal-like beauty of "Wretched lovers" is breathtaking: the blend and understanding between the five singers is deeply satisfying, and the menacing music to convey the arrival of Polyphemus is astutely integrated (the section "See what ample strides he takes" is magnificently measured). Matthew Brook's Polyphemus is extrovert, powerful and amusing, but also arouses pity and tenderness from the listener in "I rage, I melt, I burn". The dialogue between the hapless would-be seducer and the disgusted Galatea is superbly enacted by Brook and Hamilton. The roles of Damon (offering counsel to Acis) and Coridon (who advises Polyphemus to behave more gently) are admirably sung by Nicholas Hurndall Smith and Thomas Hobbs.

"The flocks shall leave the mountains" is slower than has become normal, but this better reveals its function as a tender love duet until the jealous Polyphemus can't bear in any more. Furthermore, it sets up an ideal dramatic context for a pathos-laden performance of Acis's death scene. The rapturous choral ensemble brings out the Purcellian quality in the unaccompanied final cadences of "Mourn all ye Muses", and Galatea's "Heart, the seat of soft delight" is sublimely shaped by the recorder-players and radiantly sung by Hamilton. Butt's direction from the harpsichord is a role model of taste and style, and he insightfully conveys the elusive changing tone of the story from pastoral romp into personal tragedy. Previous versions of merit still possess enduring appeal, but it seems to me that the Dunedins have transformed the way in which we can understand and enjoy Handel's lovely early English masterpiece.

ClassicFM Magazine

Handel's Acis & Galatea - Dunedin Consort - Classic FM Magazine
03 December 2008
Classic FM Magazine
Rick Jones

The Dunedin Consort, having scored such a big hit with Handel's Messiah in 2008, now heads into 2009 with what is an even better version of the same composer's Acis and Galatea. The scholarly approach continues and here John Butt's forces shrink to perform the masque exactly as it was given at its premiere at the Early of Carnaervon's country house at Cannons, Edgeware, in 1718. The five soloists are also the chorus and Damon, later a soprano, is here a third tenor. The ensemble is nigh perfect - not only is every word of Alexander Pope's and John Gay's text crystal clear and tuning immaculate, but the freshness with which they sing radiates joy throughout the entire score.

Soprano Susan Hamilton is a delicious Galatea. Her voice pours out like spring water, treading lightly on high runs with an easy, vivacious sparkle. But bass Matthew Brook's Polyphemus steals the show. His is a comic, Falstaffian portrayal with leering portamento and cavernous low notes. His runs are dark laughter in ‘O Ruddier than the Cherry' while the piping sopranino recorder mocks his volcanic pomposity. The tenors have much to live up to. Thomas Hibbs is a bright Damon, Nicholas Hurndall Smith a lyrical Coridon while Nicholas Mulroy's warm Acis may be forgiven for tiring just a little in the long ‘Love in her Eyes' - he is only mortal. John Butt directs the Dunedin Consort with the lightest touch that sets the whole masque dancing.

The Observer

Handel's Acis & Galatea - Dunedin Consort - The Observer
09 November 2008
The Observer
Stephen Pritchard

Is Handel's Acis and Galatea a masque, a serenata or a miniature opera? It's really of no consequence; what matters is how this gloriously melodic music is played and sung. If we relied on the plot alone, it would be a very slight drama. It goes something like this: girl sighs for boy, boy sighs for girl, boy killed by rival (cue much lamenting), boy handily becomes immortal.

Whatever we call this pastoral entertainment, it is a milestone in Handel's bountiful output. As John Butt, director of this triumphant recording notes, it marks Handel's fi rst setting of a substantial dramatic English text and springs from the year that he enjoyed as composer to the Earl of Carnarvon, based at Cannons, his country estate near Edgware, Middlesex. Here, Handel could escape the financial pressures of the public stage and concentrate on providing music for the earl's band of musicians and singers.

That presented a challenge. The earl employed a soprano, a bass and three tenors, but no alto. Handel set the piece accordingly, handily devising the roles of Damon and Coridon to complement the role of Acis and give the other two tenors a part in the story of the shepherd and his love for Galatea, a love cut short by the jealous giant Polyphemus, who, probably representing Mount Etna, kills Acis with a single rock.

Ever the scholar, Butt performs here from the 1718 score, using only the forces that Handel had at his disposal - four violins, no violas, two cellos, bass, two recorders, two oboes and bassoon. All the soloists sing the chorus parts. The result is a wonderfully intimate reading, which bounces along with the spring and precision of a chamber performance. There is some world-class singing here: Susan Hamilton portrays Galatea with startling clarity and sincerity; Nicholas Mulroy makes an affecting Acis and the tremendous Matthew Brook combines power and pathos as Polyphemus. Joined by tenors Thomas Hobbs and Nicholas Hurndall Smith, they make a ravishing chorus.

The Glasgow-based Dunedin Consort and Players are making waves in the world of authentic performance. This recording will surely enhance their reputation.

MusicWeb International

Handel's Acis & Galatea - Dunedin Consort - MusicWeb International
05 January 2009
MusicWeb International
Brian Wilson

If you thought that we were unlikely to have any new Handel recordings to challenge existing recommendations, this new account of Acis and Galatea should make you think again. My former version of choice for Acis, the King's Consort, on Hyperion CDA66361/2, now becomes an honourable also-ran and has already found a new home. 

I obtained the new Acis via a download from Linn's website and my original intention was simply to include it in my January 2009 Download Roundup. Two considerations persuaded me otherwise: it's too good just to receive a paragraph in a roundup which some of you may not yet have discovered - scroll down the page, past the concert reviews, to find it each month - and, as I downloaded it in CD-quality sound, it's fully comparable with the published article. 

In fact, like other recent Linn recordings, it can even be obtained in better-than-CD quality as a 24-bit studio-quality download. This involves downloading a very large file and listening to the result other than via CD - the file is too large to burn to CD - and I'm perfectly happy with the quality of both Linn's wma and flac 16-bit files.

One other user-friendly aspect of Linn's website is that it never seems to suffer from traffic congestion - whatever your broadband speed, some sites will download only at about 50k when they are busy; Acis downloaded at over 800k. 

Acis and Galatea was originally performed at Cannons, the home of the Earl of Caernarvon, later Duke of Chandos, for whose chapel Handel also composed the Chandos Anthems. The grand house is long gone but the chapel is still there, serving as the parish church, and its baroque splendours indicate how grand the house must have been. Grand though the house was, this first version of Acis was composed on a small scale, which makes it well suited to recording. William Christie (Erato 3984-25505-2, also part of a budget-price 6-CD collection on 2564-695641) has already offered us a chamber-sized performance of the later version, HWV49b, but this is the first attempt to reproduce the original and it is wholly successful. An inexpensive version on Brilliant Classics claimed to employ the original version, but actually uses larger forces - see Robert Hugill's unenthusiastic review. 

John Butt's superb scholarship would have gone for naught if the end result had not been so convincing, with all concerned giving of their best. The Dunedin Consort and Players repeat the success of their earlier award-winning Messiah and St Matthew Passion. Right from the opening Sinfonia the orchestral playing is a delight - always the right ‘size' to match the smaller vocal forces. 

There isn't a weak link in those vocal performers, whether performing as a small chorus in O the pleasure of the plains (CD1, tr.2) and elsewhere, or as soloists. Not only do they sing very well, their voices are also in the right proportion for the music. Traditionalists may hanker after Joan Sutherland as Galatea on the recent Chandos reissue of ‘Scenes from Acis and Galatea' (CHAN3147, with Sir Adrian Boult, the Decca recording from which I first got to know the work) but Susan Hamilton is a soprano much more in tune with the music's smaller scale; after all, if you want Handel opera, there's plenty to choose from, including Sutherland's own version of Alcina. 

I thought Nicholas Mulroy's Acis marginally less impressive than Hamilton's Galatea, especially when their duet The flocks shall leave the mountains (CD2, tr.11) becomes a trio with Polyphemus breaking in. The slight disappointment is more a measure of the excellence of Hamilton and of Matthew Brook as Polyphemus than any reflection on Mulroy himself. 

Handel reserves some of his best music for Polyphemus - the villain of the piece getting the best lines, as so often in Milton's Paradise Lost. Memories of Owen Brannigan in O ruddier than the cherry (CD2, tr.3) are not dispelled but, as with the Sutherland comparison, Brook's is a performance for a chamber performance, not for an opera. When he sings I rage - I melt - I burn (CD2, tr.2), he evokes real sympathy for a character who can take no more of his burning passion. 

The words of the closing section, from Cease, Galatea, cease to grieve (CD2, tr.14) may be somewhat banal, but Handel sets them to wonderful music and the performance here allows the music to win hands down over the libretto. Even the trite rhyme in Galatea, dry thy tears,/Acis now a god appears (CD2, tr.17) fails to jar; many of us, in any case, first encountered Ovid in English via the rhyming couplets of the translation by ‘various eminent hands' which appeared a year before the Cannons performance of Acis, in 1717. 

Elsewhere the libretto (by Gay and Pope?) rather improves on the 1717 translation - this section by Dryden - and even on Ovid himself:

uror enim, laesusque exaestuat acrius ignis, 

cumque suis videor translatam viribus Aetnam 

pectore ferre meo, nec tu, Galatea, moveris. [Metamorphoses XIII, 867-9] 

For oh, I burn with love, and thy disdain 

Augments at once my passion and my pain. 

Translated Etna burns within my heart, 

And thou, inhuman, wilt not ease my smart.

Loses the reference to Mount Etna and becomes

I rage - I melt - I burn! 

The feeble god [Love] has stabb'd me to the heart.

with its post-Petrarchan contrasting opposites. 

The recording, as I have already indicated, is of CD quality. I shall be very surprised if the physical discs are any better than the wma download though, of course, aficionados of surround sound will want the SACDs. 

The notes in the booklet are scholarly and detailed. Try to print them on thin paper or they won't fit inside a slim-line 2-CD case. 

I recently indicated that the Binchois Consort's recording of Dufay's Missa Se la face ay pale (Hyperion CDA67715) was already featuring in my thoughts as a possible Recording of the Year for 2009, less than two weeks after choosing this year's favourites. This new Acis and Galatea is an even more likely candidate for that honour.

Live Concert Reviews in Scotland

Handel's Acis & Galatea Live - Dunedin Consort - The Herald

10 November 2008
The Herald
Conrad Wilson

First came the recording, followed last week by a chain of public performances in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Haddington, launching Handel's Acis and Galatea as the happiest of additions to the Dunedin Consort's repertoire.

Pared musically to the minimum - just five voices and a handful of instrumentalists - the music in its Edinburgh presentation sighed gently and sweetly as it delivered the story, not quite an opera but certainly not an oratorio, of the pastoral lovers one of whom is killed by the cyclops Polyphemus and eventually transformed by his beloved into a fountain.

It's the monster, as things turn out, who gets the work's most famous aria, Oh Ruddier than the Cherry. Rendered with jovial relish by Matthew Brook, this was the highpoint of an amorous, intimate, wistful evening, in which three admirable tenors (Nicholas Mulroy as Acis with Thomas Hobbs and Nicholas Hurndall Smith as his subsidiaries) were the other male voices with Susan Hamilton the touching heroine.

If, as so often, the bass aria stole the show, the preceding ensemble (Wretched Lovers), with its beautiful broad strokes and pattering underplay, was Handel at his most wondrous. The Act One love duet (Happy We) was cloudlessly voiced, and Mulroy was mellifluous in his aria Love In Her Eyes Sits Playing. John Butt conducted briskly, but with ample charm, the sound of Patrick Denecker's warbling recorder being a special pleasure.

William Sweeney's Songs of Connacht - five wan little reminiscences of mostly melancholy human relationships - formed an apt prologue. Sung by alternating tenors with an ensemble of period instruments, they were beautiful and moving, their atmospheric accompaniments evoking at times the haunting strains of a travelling hurdy-gurdy.

Handel's Acis & Galatea Live - Dunedin Consort - The Guardian

10 November 2008
The Guardian
Rowena Smith

Following reduced-scale recordings of Messiah and the Matthew Passion, the Dunedin Consort and director John Butt have brought their revisionist approach to Handel's pastoral entertainment Acis and Galatea, with a series of performances timed to coincide with its CD release. One of the composer's first large-scale English works, Acis is one of those curious Handelian hybrids: not simply opera in English, yet with unmistakable operatic influences. Butt has chosen the original version as performed at the Cannons estate, reducing the performing forces to five singers - soloists who also double as chorus - with the unusual vocal disposition of soprano, three tenors and bass, plus a dozen instrumentalists.

Some works are more successful with this cut-down approach than others; musical power risks being jettisoned along with the extraneous performers, but here it seems natural, the transparent textures of the small ensemble lending a madrigalian quality to the choruses and emphasising the dramatic nature of the piece. In the Edinburgh performance, as on the recording, Butt kept the action moving with his customary energy, fleet-footed but not unduly driven. Susan Hamilton and Nicholas Mulroy successfully painted the bliss of the titular lovers in the first act through their succession of sweetly idyllic airs, though they were overshadowed by Matthew Brook's scenery-chewing turn as the villain, Polyphemus, in an altogether more operatic take.

Acis is a full-length work in its own right, though here it was prefaced by the premiere of William Sweeney's Songs of Connacht, not a choral work but a song cycle for tenor (shared here by Mulroy and Thomas Hobbs) and period instrument ensemble. Based on translated Gaelic poems, it is atmospheric, sensitively written and worth hearing again, though perhaps in a different context.

Handel's Acis & Galatea Live - Dunedin Consort - The Scotsman

07 November 2008
The Scotsman
Kenneth Walton

I have never heard Handel's music described as "butch" before, and it's the last adjective you'd expect an eminent music professor to utter as critical observation. But that's how John Butt, artistic director of the Dunedin Consort, views the racy character of the bass lines in Handel's curious pastorale Acis and Galatea. It's the work whose notoriously troublesome past has been the latest target of this colourful Glasgow University professor's infectious curiosity.

Followers of the Dunedin's recent string of triumphs - which have encompassed major award-winning recordings of Handel's Messiah and Bach's St Matthew Passion on the Glasgow-based Linn label - will be familiar with Butt's probing mind and dynamic spirit. Both factors are intrinsic to him, manifest as a dynamic intertwining of rigorous, unique research and charismatic performance style.

The most recent fruits of Butt's tireless mind burst onto the scene this week with the launch of the Consort's brand-new recording of Acis and Galatea, tied to a series of performances of the entire work that began in Haddington on Tuesday and ends tonight in Glasgow University Chapel.

The outcome is extraordinary. The recording itself offers a fascinating insight into a world of musical imagery that might even take many Handel aficionados by surprise. The first thing to notice is a style of instrumental doubling that imbues many of the work's traditional da capo arias with an unfamiliarity that is oddly unnerving at times (low and lugubrious instrumental doublings of the solo voice, for instance), but is genuinely refreshing and revelatory when considered as an inventive illumination of the story-line.

Needless to say, the period instrument performances from the Dunedin Players, coupled with the well-cast pristine voices of the Consort, are as stylish and vivacious as any of their previous Linn issues. So full marks there.

But this is a project that really has to be seen as well as heard. In Tuesday's ultra-slick performance at St Mary's Church in Edinburgh, the enormous fulfilment lay in its subtle stage management. The hideous facial antics and sneering side glances of bass Matthew Brook, exercising his beastly power as the jealous Polyphemus and heartlessly "removing" Acis from his lover, Galatea, even raised infectious laughter among the audience. How often does that happen in a Handel performance?

Yet this is not a tale that thrives on its theatricality. "As a story it is very static," says Butt. Nothing much - as related by the texts of John Gay, Alexander Pope and John Hughes - actually happens, other than Polyphemus killing Acis with a rock and the latter being immortalised as a fountain.

Yet Handel's music never once loses a sense of heightened emotion or meaningful beauty. At least, not in this performing version, for which Butt has, it seems, cracked a puzzle that has left many previous performances and recordings I have heard disappointingly void of direction and cohesion . "It is a drama of mentalities, a work of personality and affect. One of the people who witnessed its first performance in 1718 actually called it an opera, but it is far more static than opera," says Butt.

In his quest to find a performing solution, Butt went back to basics, investigated the original scores, and discovered markings in Handel's conducting copy that made a whole lot of musical sense. "The copy was full of ‘segue' markings that suggest he intended the movements to run from one to the other without a break," he explains.

And that's exactly what transforms the Dunedin's version into something that makes complete sense dramatically and lifts the music onto a completely convincing plane.

"I wanted it so that one character would literally step into the metre of another, allowing them to interlock both musically and visually," says Butt.

Not surprisingly, then, the Consort's live performance is presented without a break, which says even more for the outstanding quality of Tuesday's 100-minute long performance. It shot past without a moment's hiatus.

The combined singing of Susan Hamilton (Galatea), the superlative Nicholas Mulroy (Acis), the aforementioned Brook, Nicholas Hurndal Smith (Coridon), and the impressive young tenor Thomas Hobbs (Damon), is without a single weakness. Butt conducts, from the harpsichord, a small period instrumental ensemble that tastefully underpins the effervescence of the score, not least the bassoon writing that led to Butt's "butch" description of the gritty bass line.

So what's next for the Dunedin Consort now that it is firmly on a roll with this unfolding Baroque recording series? Butt has hopes that they can source enough money to keep the momentum going. "I have a whole list of things; the issue is simply being able to pay for them," he says.

Should the funds materialise (the Classic FM Gramophone Award-winning Messiah became feasible through a private subscription plan) the most likely follow-up recording will be of Joshua Rifkind's new performing edition of Bach's B minor Mass. It's a goal worth pursuing, given the persistent quality and worldwide recognition of the series so far.