2014 marks the tercentenary of Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover’s succession to the British throne as George I, the first of the Hanoverian monarchs under whom Handel and his contemporaries – both British and continental – flourished. This year’s Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music accordingly took as its theme ‘The Year 1714’, bringing together an eclectic and exciting mix of performers to reflect the extraordinary musical variety that distinguishes the eighteenth century. Marking the end not only of the 2014 festival, but also of Lufthansa’s thirty-year sponsorship thereof was this performance of Handel’s 1748 oratorio, Joshua, which showcased the best of international music collaboration at the very highest level, bringing together a set of international soloists, the NDR Choir (Hamburg), and the FestspielOrchester of the Göttingen International Handel Festival, directed from the harpsichord by Laurence Cummings.  

Joshua is one of four so-called ‘victory’ oratorios Handel composed in the late 1740s, which commemorate the defeat of the 1745-46 Jacobite Rebellion (the others are the Occasional Oratorio, Judas Maccabaeus, and Alexander Balus). Set to a flimsy libretto assumed to have been penned by the Reverend Thomas Morrell, it takes as its subject matter the biblical story of Joshua (tenor Kenneth Tarver) ‘rousing his people to a sequence of divinely aided victories’, as festival director Lindsay Kemp writes in his programme notes. These include the destruction of Jericho and the miracle of the sun and moon standing still at the battle of Gibeon, set against a somewhat uninspired and altogether clichéd love story between the young Israelite captain Othniel (mezzo-soprano Renata Pokupić) and Achsah (soprano Anna Dennis), the daughter of the ageing warrior Caleb (baritone Tobias Berndt). Whilst pleasant and appropriately Handelian in sound and texture, there is little dramatic or musical development as we follow the Israelites’ celebration of their deliverance from Egyptian bondage in Part One, the military campaign against Jericho and Jerusalem in Part Two, and Othniel’s final single-handed victory against Debir in Part Three, which establishes his military prowess and wins him the hand of Achsah – at which point Joshua’s eponymous hero has inexplicably disappeared from the story.

The oratorio remained a favourite with English and continental audiences until well after Handel’s death, but experienced a notable decline in the twentieth century, which, given its manifest lack of dramatic structure, is perhaps not entirely unsurprising. Moreover, as Lindsay Kemp notes, critical engagement with Handel over the past fifty or so years has tended to focus on the more mature psychological drama of oratorios like Samson, Jephtha, or Theodora. Joshua, by contrast, offers very little in the way of convincing characterisation or indeed depth. Lacking the Miltonic grandeur that Charles Jennens brings to earlier works including Saul and Messiah, this libretto – the original source of ‘See, the conqu’ring hero comes!’ – serves the often crudely articulated purpose of allegorising a romantic ideal of English nationhood and divinely sanctioned kingship: ‘A friend to freedom, and ordain’d to save’, as Caleb intones at the very end.

Amid its triumphalist militarism and patriotic fervour, perhaps the most difficult role to bring to life is that of Joshua himself, consisting, as it does, of a string of rather unremarkable recitatives and arias that seem to serve no other purpose than to provide exposition. But American tenor Kenneth Tarver, usually more at home in the operatic bel canto repertoire, rose to the challenge with considerable aplomb. A few pitch-related wobbles early on aside, his martial air ‘Haste, Israel haste’ in Part Two, for instance, was delivered with effortless virtuosity and breath-taking technique, showing off a rich and wonderfully supple voice to highly dramatic effect. Joshua’s dramatic counterpart is the figure of the ageing warrior Caleb, here sung by the German baritone Tobias Berndt, a student of Friedrich Fischer-Dieskau and Thomas Quasthoff. His rendition of ‘See, the raging flames arise’, with its explosive melismatic sequence on the word ‘arise’, was particularly fine, setting the very highest standards for agility, resonance, and vocal colour. 

Unfortunately, the two soprano parts of Othniel and Achsah did not manage to convince to an equal extent. Both Anna Dennis and Renata Pokupić command expressive and well-matched voices sustained by flawless technique and an extensive vocal range, making for some breathtakingly beautiful duets, including ‘Our limpid streams with freedom flow’, and especially the moving ‘As first in valour’, which proclaims their mutual love. But individually, both performances fell curiously flat. Although a veteran of the repertoire, Pokupić gave what can only be described as a chewy performance. She seemed to struggle to get her words out in time, often straining noticeably in the lower register, her rich and darkly coloured mezzo aquiver with an unpleasant and overly dramatic kind of vibrato that seemed better suited to Verdi or Puccini, but entirely misplaced here. Dennis seemed to master technically demanding arias like ‘Oh, had I Jubal’s lyre’, or the lovely ‘Hark, ‘tis the linnet and the thrush!’ with ease, but floundered elsewhere – notably in her first air, ‘Oh, who can tell’, which was likewise marred by a violent and out-of-control vibrato that lessened somewhat as the evening wore on.

The real stars of this evening’s performance were the superb NDR Choir (Hamburg) and the FestspielOrchester Göttingen, conducted from the harpsichord by Laurence Cummings. If the solo parts in Joshua can seem a little one-dimensional and underdeveloped at times, the opposite is true for the instrumental and choral parts, which traverse a wide range of musical moods and colours brilliantly captured by the NDR Choir. From the very first note, northern Germany’s leading vocal ensemble provided a warm, swelling, beautifully balanced and agile sound, be it in the Israelites’ thunder chorus, ‘Glory to God!’ at the beginning of Part Two, or the slightly more placid choral version of ‘See, the conqu’ring hero comes!’ towards the end. Harmonious and coherent throughout, this was a particularly memorable performance, aptly eulogised by Achsah’s meta-dramatic quip in Part One: ‘These praises to the feather’d choir belong’.

The FestspielOrchester Göttingen, conducted in characteristically crisp yet flamboyant manner by Cummings, provided excellent instrumental accompaniment throughout, wonderfully attuned to the very different challenges posed by the various pastoral and military passages. Special mention is due to the brass section, whose explosive fanfares – one of them from the back of the auditorium – made for particularly exciting effects.

Altogether, this was an extremely satisfying and fitting conclusion to another brilliant festival, demonstrating on the very highest level of performance what music can achieve by way of inter-cultural dialogue. As Othniel states, ‘Nations, who in future story, / Would recorded be with glory, / Let them through the world proclaim: / Friendship is the road to fame’.

Production photograph © Jonathan Rose for the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music.

The Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music 2014 took place between May 16 and May 24 in London. The Göttingen International Handel Festival takes place in Göttingen between May 29 and June 10, 2014.