Handel: Pensieri notturni di Filli (Nel dolce dell'oblio), HWV 134

The 4th volume of Brilliant Classics’ recordings of Handel’s complete cantatas, performed by Contrasto Armonico and directed by Marco Vitale, gathers together five works that vividly illustrate the composer’s skill at setting the words of his texts, creating hitherto unknown emotional depth and nuance from modest orchestral forces. The musical setting of Clori, mia bella Clori amply displays the genius that would establish Handel as the leading operatic composer of his day, using a range of different combinations of instruments to respond to the subject of each section of the text, from grief and weeping to passionate jealousy. Similarly, in both Pensieri notturni di Filli (Nel dolce dell’oblio) and Lungi n’andò Fileno Handel employs striking dissonance to create a musical counterpart to the despair and suffering of the texts. By contrast, Sans y penser, Handel’s only French cantata, is a comic work, closing with a humorous musical illustration of the singer’s tribute to drinking. Handel composed over 100 secular cantatas during his stay in Italy in the early 1700s. He had several patrons; among the most generous and supportive was the Marquis Francesco Maria Ruspoli, and most of the information on the works included on this disc comes from his records. These cantatas reveal the richness of the young composer’s compositional palette, and his ability to depict the content of his texts in such a way that the listener both hears and experiences the emotions of each work. As such, they are an important foreshadowing of his later career as a celebrated operatic composer.

This is a recording of Spanish music from the period of the first 15 years of the 18th century, composed during the War of the Spanish Succession. The composers represented include Porsile, Valls, Mancini, Cladara and Rabassa. It is a collection of cantatas, sonatas and songs. Performed by the expert Grupo de Musica Barroca La Folia, directed by Pedro Bonet, this is a fine collection of Spanish period music performed and played with exquisite style and taste.

For the second Glossa Portrait release the spotlight falls upon the soprano Roberta Invernizzi. It was the inspired choice of Fabio Bonizzoni to involve the Milanese singer in his series of Le Cantate Italiane di Handel, and Invernizzi appeared on no less than five of the seven discs in that greatly-admired series. This 2-disc Portrait draws on those recordings to highlight the delicious characterisations of Invernizzi in Handel’s vivid and visceral portrayals of nymphs and goddesses such as Diana, Cloris, Amarilis, Lidia and Fili, Arcadian characters one and all but nonetheless human in personality.

Roberta Invernizzi is gifted with an ability to master the technical, expressive and temperamental challenges set by Baroque composers such as Vivaldi, Monteverdi and Alessandro Scarlatti and she has also added a scintillating theatrical verve to many of the incursions into Neapolitan opera buffa in the company of Antonio Florio.

Musica Alta Ripa pays homage to the great George Frideric Handel on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of his death. Johanna Koslowsky sings with elegance and fine tone on this beautiful re-issue from MDG.