George Frideric Handel

The harpsichordist Laurence Cummings is the supremely gifted and versatile Director of the London Handel Orchestra. This CD is being released just in time for the annual London Handel Festival which begins at the end of February and ends at the beginning of April. The recording took place in the Handel House Museum.

Eight of The Sixteen’s celebrated Handel recordings in one beautiful boxed set edition.

Harry Christophers and The Sixteen have long been celebrated for their recordings and performances of Handel. Over the past three decades Harry Christophers and his award-winning ensemble have expanded their Handel repertoire to take in his greatest works and have performed them to audiences across the globe from the UK, Europe and the Middle East to Australia and Japan. They have also made numerous celebrated recordings of Handel’s masterpieces and this twelve CD boxed set features a selection of some of their finest discs along with three remarkable solo albums featuring The Sixteen’s celebrated orchestra and acclaimed sopranos Sarah Connolly, Ann Murray and Elin Manahan Thomas.

Handel’s keyboard suites may be among his lesser-known works, but the so-called ‘Eight Great Suites’ of 1720 are true masterpieces of the genre.

This volume, containing the first four, showcases his extraordinary versatility, imagination and contrapuntal skill, as well as his willingness to break with tradition.

Handel skilfully weaves together a wide range of forms, including fugues, a toccata, Italianate airs and Baroque dances.

This new Handel collection features two great singers alongside the English Concert, arguably one of the best baroque orchestras in the UK. Duets play a key role in Handel’s stage works. A master of the Baroque opera seria medium, with its extended sequence of solo arias and recitative dialogue, he understood the dramatic effectiveness of occasional numbers blending two voices, generally those of a soprano heroine and a castrato hero.

The exquisite programme offers a carefully chosen selection of Handel duets from his operas and oratorios Giulio Cesare, Belshazzar, Theodora, Ottone, Sosarme, Radimisto, Rodelinda, Agrippina and Tamerlano.

Sarah Connolly CBE has become a highly sought-after performer on the operatic stage in a wide range of repertoire. Her Handelian roles have including the title-role in Giulio Cesare for the Glyndebourne Festival; in Agrippina, Xerxes, Ariodante and Ruggiero (Alcina) for the English National Opera and Ino/Juno (Semele) for the San Francisco Opera. She also starred in the 2009 Last Night of the Proms.

Rosemary Joshua is well known for her Handel roles, having sung Ginevra (Ariodante) in San Diego; Angelica (Orlando) in Munich, for Covent Garden and at the Aix-en- Provence Festival; and the title-role in Semele for which she was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award and recorded for Chandos. Her recording of Partenope for Chandos was awarded the Stanley Sadie Handel Recording Prize.

The English Concert is conducted by Harry Bicket.

With a combination of such forces, this album is sure to make for a must-have for all Handel enthusiasts.

Georg Friedrich Händel’s great choral oratorio, “Israel in Egypt” is the most valuable gift the composer ever gave to choral music. The chorus functions as protagonist in this powerful work, which tells the Old Testament story of Exodus with telling dramatic intensity. Two multiple prize-winning, major ensemble, Concerto Köln, the well known period instrument ensemble and the Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, joined forces for the first time in November of 2008. The strong individual characteristics of the vocal soloists combine impressively with the chorus and orchestra for a multi-layered interpretation that is concurrently borne by a clear, common musical objective. This recording features the original three-part version from 1739.

Live-recording; Munich, Prinzregententheater, Nov. 2008

Booklet Notes: English, German, French

Libretto: English, German

Reissue of Naïve’s best selling (more than 800,000 copies sold worldwide) soundtrack to the film ‘Farinelli’, the 1994 biopic film about the life and career of Italian opera singer Farinelli, considered one of the greatest castrato singers of all time.

It stars Stefano Dionisi as Farinelli and was directed by Belgian director Gérard Corbiau. Although Dionisi provided the speaking voice, Farinelli's singing voice was provided by a soprano, Ewa Malas-Godlewska and a countertenor, Derek Lee Ragin, who were recorded separately then digitally merged to recreate the sound of a castrato. Through the film the general public discovered a whole repertoire of works for a voice that can no longer be heard today. The soundtrack from the film became a bestseller, as we discovered with delight some beautiful pieces by Handel, Pergolesi, Hasse, Porpora and others, in a unique interpretation.