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After Friday’s sublime performance of Handel’s L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato at the opening concert of 2013 Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, I am puzzled why this ravishing masterpiece doesn’t enjoy wider popularity (although it was performed recently at the London Handel Festival).

It’s a long way from modern Durham to renaissance Venice, from a cold winter evening in a small northern English city to a spring morning in one of the richest and most powerful cities the world has ever seen – but Paul McCreesh’s imaginative reconstruction of a Venetian Doge’s coronation mass made the leap almost instantaneous.

22 November, St Cecilia’s day, lends itself perfectly to music by two of Britain’s greatest composers. Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten both wrote pieces to celebrate Cecilia as patron saint of music, and Britten was inspired and enriched by Purcell’s music.

Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, first performed at the Birmingham Town Hall in 1847, was enormously popular in Victorian England. In this sense, the Royal Albert Hall, the grandest of Victorian buildings, is spiritually an ideal venue for this great choral masterpiece.

Leider litt die rekonstruierte Weihnachtsmesse der Gabrieli Players an ein paar „Aufführungskrankheiten“.

Paul McCreesh fand mit seinem Ensemble eine herzerwärmende Mischung universell wohltuender Festlichkeit.

Sous la direction peu convaincante de Paul McCreesh, le Gabrieli Consort a livré un programme italien inégal, malgré l'incarnation brûlante de la mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg.

Porté ici par un Gabrieli Consort en bonne forme, quoiqu’un peu contenu par la direction de Paul McCreesh, et des solistes tout à fait convaincants, King Arthur rappelle ici ses grandes qualités musicales

Beinahe war dieser King Arthur so rund und erhaben schön, dass die fünf Akte auch zu fünf Sternen geführt hätten.

Gabrieli Consort & Players, liderados por Paul McCreesh, presentaron en el Auditorio Nacional un programa que recreaba la misa de coronación del doge de Venecia en 1595. Obras de los hermanos Gabrieli, entre otros, en alternancia con canto llano y fanfarrias instrumentales, nos hicieron disfrutar de la excelente calidad de un conjunto absolutamente referencial.

Gabrieli Consort & Players zelebrieren Händels Musik vorzüglich.

Zusammen mit dem Chor war für mich der Countertenor Iestyn Davies der klare Höhepunkt des Abends