According to the English playwright and poet William Congreve “Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast". A generation earlier, John Dryden, the first Poet Laureate, expressed similar sentiments in his Ode Alexander’s Feast, its text set to glorious music by George Frideric Handel in 1736. The work’s successful Covent Garden premiere that same year marked a new beginning for the composer, who abandoned Italian opera for English oratorio.
Subtitled “The Power of Musick”, the work describes a banquet held by Alexander the Great and his mistress Thaïs after his victory over the Persians. Timotheus, the court musician, entertains and beguiles his royal master in song that arouses a variety of moods traversing desire, pity and fury, finally inciting him to destroy the ancient city of Persepolis in revenge for his dead Greek soldiers. Neither oratorio, nor ceremonial ode, Alexander’s Feast is a curious hybrid (yet owing something to both) honouring St Cecilia in its celebration of the power of music that can “swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire”.
Much of the work’s early popularity can be attributed to the wealth of tunes for choir and three soloists, their greater number effected through arias shorn of their da capo repeats. In addition, Handel’s colourful orchestral scoring includes a grief-laden cello solo for the death of the Persian king, intermittent use of recorders and horns and bellicose trumpets and drums when Alexander decides to butcher his enemies – something in today’s troubled geopolitical climate might carry a sensitivity warning. Dotted throughout the work are exuberant choruses, one evoking a drunken bacchanal, and three instrumental concertos, here reduced to the first movement of the Concerto in B flat, Op.4 no.6, delicately highlighting the harp although in this instance played on the harpsichord with agile fingerwork from Peter Dyke, and supported by the Midlands-based period instrument orchestra the Musical and Amicable Society.
The Three Choirs Festival‘s Artistic Director Geraint Bowen presided over an efficient performance in Hereford Cathedral that highlighted the drama within the grander choruses and vivid storytelling from the soloists. The choristers and lay clerks of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester Cathedrals responded well to Bowen’s brisk tempi, singing with enthusiasm and precision. If the chorus in praise of Bacchus sounded a little too refined, swagger missing from the lower voices, there was much to enjoy in the energy of “The many rend the skies”. Elsewhere, contrasting dynamics would have been welcome, there are only so many times one wants to hear “none but the brave” sung to an unvarying forte in the opening chorus.
Among the soloists, tenor Gwilym Bowen was an ardent narrator singing with superb diction, operatic intensity and admirable breath control in his opening aria “Happy pair”. The more lightweight tones of soprano Rowan Pierce were well suited to the angelic aspects of her role, bringing delicacy of expression to the vanquished king, Darius, while lacking pungency for “War, he sung, is toil and trouble”. Of the two passages for solo baritone Gareth Brynmor John excelled in “Revenge, Timotheus cries”, showcasing martial zeal in the aria’s hissing snakes and depth of feeling in the spectral middle section conjuring the “ghastly band” of the Grecian dead, here given atmospheric support by violas and bassoons. Altogether, a rousing account where pace and energy never flagged – certainly a performance that even the great Handel might have envisaged.
