The Oxford Early Music Festival, held from 10-13 May 2016, is firmly established as an important event in the national musical calendar. This year’s Festival covered seven centuries from Hildegard of Bingen in the twelfth, the eighteenth being represented by Pergolesi (1710-1736), Durante (1684-1755) and by the centrepiece of the Festival, a performance of Handel’s strange oratorio Israel in Egypt, first performed in 1739. It was given in the spacious, if uncomfortable, surroundings of Oxford’s University Church with its wonderfully clear acoustics, allowing every word to be heard but exposing singers to the closest scrutiny.
The soloists were Emma Kirkby and Robyn Allegra Parton (sopranos), Robin Blaze (alto), Thomas Hobbs (tenor) and Brian McAlea and Jonathan Arnold (baritones). The chorus was the thirty-six strong Ensemble 45 (taking its name from the opus number of its first performance, Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem) directed by Will Dawes; its size was adequate but modest for the great double choruses of the work. The accompaniment was provided by the critically acclaimed International Baroque Players, formed in 2009 and consisting of fifteen strings, double wind (flutes, oboes, bassoons and trumpets), three trombones, timpani, organ and harpsichord. All was under the direction of Daniel Hyde who currently goes by the title Informator Choristarum, Organist and Tutorial Fellow in Music at Magdalen College; in the summer he leaves Oxford for New York – he will be hard to replace.
Israel in Egypt was written during Handel’s transition from a composer of opera to oratorio. Based on verses mainly from Exodus and from The Book of Psalms, it is in two parts, the first describing the plagues of Egypt, followed by triumphalist rejoicing at the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. He started work on it immediately following the completion of Saul. Unlike Saul, which adapts well to the operatic stage, as seen in the recent Glyndebourne production, Israel in Egypt is pure oratorio. One cannot imagine an operatic staging since the soloists have little to do, the work being dominated by the choruses. Most writers rate Israel in Egypt very highly among Handel’s works, though few go as far as H.C. Robbins Landon, who writes: ‘Perhaps Israel in Egypt is the greatest piece of music Handel ever wrote’ but immediately backtracks: ‘but with grave errors in calculation’, whatever he might mean by that. There is no doubt that the build-up of dramatic tension in the sequence of choruses is unique, more powerful than Part 2 of Messiah where the sequence is interspersed with solos. No matter that much of the music is taken from other sources (including an important debt to Stradella); it is adapted as a perfect fit to the words. In a pre-concert talk, Deborah Rooke of Regent Park’s College speculatively placed the oratorio in its contemporary religious, political and social setting, before giving an analysis of the text.
Outstanding in the first half was the alto Robin Blaze, with the chorus in the Israelites’ lamentation and in the solo ‘Their land brought forth frogs’. Following this the ‘Plague of Locusts’ was delayed by the late arrival of three trombones and the enthusiastic timpanist: each needed to play a full part in the following eight choruses.
Remarkable in the second half were the duets, for sopranos ‘The Lord is my strength’ and for basses ‘The Lord is a man of war.’ Both of these involved passages in canon requiring closely matched voices. In the first, the singers were Emma Kirkby, doyenne of early music sopranos, with young Robyn Allegra Parton. Both were beautiful voices but with one passing its peak and the other approaching maturity they were, unfortunately, barely compatible. On the contrary, the two male voices, Brian McAlea and Jonathan Arnold, were perfectly matched. Theirs was the other outstanding memory to carry away from the evening. Their breath control and articulation in the long passages in canon, faultlessly executed in the clear acoustic of the Church, were truly amazing. The choir and orchestra kept up the momentum throughout, the total involvement of the choir being reflected in their uncanny collective movement in their response to the music, notably in depicting ‘the horse and his rider thrown into the sea’. But the oratorio ends on a quieter note with the clear voice of Miriam, the sister of Aaron (Parton), rising above the orchestra and chorus, giving thanks to the Lord.
It is difficult to understand why the oratorio was such a flop in Handel’s day, receiving only four performances. It cannot have been purely for musical reasons, given the quality of the writing – maybe the resources available did not match up to the concept. In part it was possibly due to the public unease and authoritarian disapproval of performing religious works in a secular, theatrical environment.
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Like the proverbial London bus, two further Handel performances immediately followed Israel in Egypt. The first was another performance of the same oratorio at the London Festival of Baroque Music on 17 May, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on the 20th. This was given in Westminster Abbey by the thirty-five strong Choir of the Abbey with St James’s Baroque conducted by James O’Donnell. It was an interesting comparison. The boys’ voices of the Choir produced a different sound to Ensemble 45, thrilling in its way but lacking something of its theatrical intensity. Solos were sung by members of the Choir also making this more of a religious experience than the original theatrical performance. Both performances did full justice to the composer, presenting in their own way the drama of the sequence of great choruses.
The same could not be said of the performance of Messiah given at St John’s Smith Square on 13 May as part of the same Festival, which was broadcast on 17 May. This was given by the Dunedin Consort, directed from the keyboard by John Butt. It claimed to be the rarely performed version held at its Dublin premiere in 1742. If so, it would explain why Messiah was not an immediate success. The limited resources produced a very thin sound and were completely incapable of doing justice to the now familiar great choruses. Although the Dunedin’s 2007 recording received great critical acclaim I cannot see it having more than academic interest. The performances of Israel in Egypt show how baroque music should be played in the twenty-first century.
© Peter Schofield