Handel
's
L'allegro, il penseroso, ed il moderato, HWV 55
, is an underrated work. Composed in 1740 as he was beginning to turn decisively toward English-language music, it was based on a pair of contrasting pastoral poems by
Milton
.
mixed these together and had his librettist,
Charles Jennens
(soon to write the text of
Messiah, HWV 56
), add a third part, Il Moderato, as a kind of synthesis at the end. It sounds thrown together, but the music is brilliant and has much in common with that of
Messiah
; the chorus has a lot to do, great care is taken with the accompanied recitatives, and the solos are full of tunes that are, given the chance, just as memorable as that of the famed later oratorio. The durable
William Christie
, 78 years old when this album appeared in 2023 and vaulted onto classical best-seller lists, generally specializes in French music with his group
Les Arts Florissants
, but he has been performing this ode in concert, and it is wonderful to find that he has gotten around to recording it. It is a wonderful reading that captures and highlights the dramatic contrasts in the work, which really plays to
Christie
's strengths in handling a complex score, selecting the right soloists who may not be at the top of the charts, and finding the excitement in unfamiliar Baroque scores. He excels across the board here. Among the soloists are a couple of standouts, soprano
Rachel Redmond
and boy soprano
Leo Jemison
takes brisk tempos, grabbing the listener's attention right at the top with the quick introduction to the recitativo accompagnato "Hence with vain deluding joys." The proportions in everything are just right, with a choir of 20 and an orchestra of 28 deployed so as to reflect vividly the contrasts in the text. Listeners unfamiliar with this work could not ask for a better introduction to it.
Harmonia Mundi
's sound at the Paris Philharmonie keeps the texts clear, even in densely polyphonic music. ~ James Manheim