Händel in Hamburg
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 มิ.ย. 2024
- 00:00 Suite from the opera Almira, HWV 1 (1705) Reconstructed by Peter Holman:
Ouverture - Courante - Bourrée - Menuet - Rigaudon - Rondeau - Sarabande - Gigue - Chaconne
13:34 Suite in G minor, possibly from the opera Nero, HWV 453 (1705) Reconstructed by Peter Holman:
Ouverture - Entrée - Menuet I/II - Chaconne
23:02 Oboe Concerto in G minor, HWV 287 (?1703-5): Grave - Allegro - Sarabande (Largo) - Allegro *
31:03 Suite from Florindo & Daphne, HWV 336, 352-4 (?1705-6): Ouverture - Sarabande - Gavotte - Menuet - Allemande, Bourrée, Allemande - Menuet - Allemande - Coro - Allemande, Rigaudon, Allemande
47:05 Overture in B flat major from the opera Rodrigo, HWV 5 (?1706): Ouverture - Gigue - Sarabande - Matelot - Menuet - Bourrée - (Air) - Menuet - Passacaille
The Parley of Instruments - Peter Holman, conductor
Violin, Concertmistress: Elizabeth Wallfisch / Violin [1]: Adrian Butterfield, Stephen Jones, Theresa Caudle
Violin [2]: Fiona Duncan, Helen Orsler, Judy Tarling, William Thorp / Viola: Duncan Druce, Paul Denley
Viol [Bass]: Helen Gough, Katharine Sharman, Mark Caudle, Richard Campbell
Oboe: Frank de Bruine (*), Gail Hennessy / Bassoon: Sally Jackson
Theorbo, Lute [Archlute], Guitar [Baroque]: Elizabeth Kenny, William Carter
Harpsichord: Gary Cooper, Peter Holman
Recorded on 3-5 December 1997, St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, United Kingdom
George Frideric Handel arrived in the city of Hamburg in the spring or early summer of 1703 at the age of eighteen. He had been trained by F W Zachow, the leading composer of his home town Halle, had studied law at the University of Halle, and had served a year as the organist of that town’s Calvinist cathedral. According to the Hamburg composer, singer and theorist Johann Mattheson, who became his friend, he was already ‘strong at the organ’, but ‘knew very little about melody’: ‘he knew how to compose practically nothing but regular fugues’. Hamburg quickly broadened Handel’s musical outlook. Then as now, it was an important commercial and cultural centre and possessed the only commercial opera house in Germany, founded in 1678. Handel obtained a post as a violinist in the opera orchestra, and quickly came under the influence of Reinhard Keiser, the leading Hamburg opera composer. By the beginning of 1705 he had written two operas for the opera house, Almira and Nero, first performed on 8 January and 25 February respectively. Handel subsequently wrote a third opera for Hamburg, though for some reason it was not performed before he left for Italy in the autumn of 1706; it was staged at the Hamburg opera house in January 1708 as two separate works, called Florindo and Daphne.
The Hamburg opera style was remarkably eclectic. Like some of Keiser’s operas, Almira has a libretto in a mixture of Italian and German, and its music mixes Italian, German and French elements in more or less equal measure. The French influence is largely confined to the orchestral music: Hamburg operas tended to have spectacular ballets in the French manner, and the Hamburg orchestral idiom was largely modelled on Lully’s writing for the French court orchestra, the Vingt-quatre violons. Keiser’s operas contain a good deal of Lullian orchestral writing, and Johann Sigismund Kusser, his predecessor at the Hamburg opera house, published orchestral suites in the French style and was one of the most prominent members of the group of German composers known today as Les Lullistes. This album brings together a selection of the delightful orchestral music in the French style that Handel wrote in Hamburg, some of it recorded for the first time. Following the practice of French orchestras of the time and their German imitators, we have used large bass violins tuned in B flat on the bass line instead of the more modern Italianate combination of cellos and double basses, and we have assumed that oboes and bassoons should play in the more vigorous movements even where they are not specified. The continuo section, of two harpsichords and two theorbos (whose players also employ archlutes and baroque guitars on occasion), is typical of that used in opera houses around 1700.
If, as is usually assumed, Handel began his career as an orchestral composer with Almira, then his debut was remarkably assured: its French Ouverture is one of the most daring, bravura examples of the genre, with elaborate written-out tirades (rushing scales) and unexpected changes of pace and harmonic direction. It is followed by a selection of dances from the opera: the next five movements, a Courante, a Bourrée, a Menuet for two oboes and bassoon, a Rigaudon and a graceful Rondeau, come from a ball scene at the end of Act I, the Sarabande and the concluding Chaconne are the dances of Spanish men and women in Act I, while the Gigue is a ‘Dance of Charlatans’ in Act III. If it is true that Handel ‘knew very little about melody’ when he came to Hamburg, he must have learned remarkably quickly; these dances already have a delightful sureness of touch, and several of them were returned to again and again in later works. The first half of the Bourrée is familiar to us from the Water Music, while the Sarabande is the earliest member of a family of pieces that includes the famous ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ in Rinaldo (1711). In the surviving score, prepared for Telemann’s 1732 Hamburg revival of the opera, some of the dances lack their inner parts, which I have supplied for this recording.
Until recently it was thought that the music for Florindo and Daphne was entirely lost, but Bernd Baselt showed in 1983 that a group of orchestral dances in a manuscript from the Aylesford collection (now in the British Library) comes from them, and that a second Aylesford manuscript associates keyboard versions of three of the dances with the early Overture in B flat, HWV336. Thus it is possible to assemble a substantial orchestral suite from the fragments. The selection recorded here begins with the overture (partly reused in II trionfo del Tempo), followed by a Sarabande in the ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ mould, a Gavotte, a Menuet, a lively Allemande enclosing a Bourrée for two oboes and bassoon, another dance called Menuet that really seems to be a wild polonaise, another Allemande with an irresistible motif that suggests a peasant stamping dance, a minuet-like Coro (probably an instrumental version of a chorus), and a delicious third Allemande, this time enclosing a Rigaudon for two oboes and bassoon. Again, one can only marvel at the young Handel’s gift for memorable turns of melody and harmony, and his unerring ear for orchestral sound.
The Suite in G minor, HWV453, only survives in another Aylesford keyboard manuscript, dating from the 1730s, but scholars are agreed that it comes from Handel’s Hamburg period-Bernd Baselt suggesting that it is the overture for Nero-and the lack of idiomatic keyboard figuration strongly suggests that it was originally written for orchestra; I certainly found it easy to score up for four-part strings with two oboes and bassoon, adding solos for two violins in the concluding Chaconne. The first section of the overture is related to the equivalent movements of the Italian sacred cantata ‘Donna che in ciel’ and the opera Agrippina (1709), while, as we might expect, there are a number of fleeting similarities between the dances and numbers in Almira.
The Oboe Concerto in G minor also probably dates from Handel’s Hamburg period, and seems to be his first essay in the Italian concerto form, though it has a Sarabande in the French style instead of a proper slow movement. The last movement is the earliest version of one of Handel’s most popular and memorable pieces, best known from the Organ Concerto in G minor, Op 4 No 3.
Handel wrote his opera Vincer se stesso è la maggior vittoria, commonly known as Rodrigo, for Florence; it was probably first performed there in November 1707. The work in general represents a turning-point in Handel’s composing career, though the extended overture is still largely in the Franco-German style, and a number of scholars have suggested that it began life as an independent work, written in Hamburg before he left for Italy. To complicate things further, all the movements except the concluding Passacaille were used in London in January 1710 as a suite for Ben Jonson’s play The Alchemist, though Handel was still in Italy at the time and it is unlikely that he knew of the production or the subsequent publication of the music. It certainly makes a highly effective concert suite, with a series of delightful dances sandwiched between one of his most concisely effective overtures and the striking and elaborately scored Passacaille, with its brilliant violin solo. This movement is certainly a spectacular farewell to the world of the Hamburg opera and its Francophile orchestra.
Peter Holman, 1998
"I bow down my head to Handel; so much with so little." Beethoven
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Handel's magic (!) Excellently performed! J.S.Bach wanted to meet the "music icon" Handel all his life. Mozart, J. Haydn,...,Beethoven, Schubert considered Handel "the greatest composer of all time"!
Handel's native North German style, which he later mixed with Italian, French and English styles to make him the most cosmopolitan composer of the Baroque. All styles can be found at Händel.
Try Telemann so, both are most of everything but Telemann first.
@@jmvillar2632 I do, I listen to Telemann's orchestral works, but I don't like his vocal, choral and keyboard music because it's low quality, in my opinion, so he is not one of my favorite composers.
Gracias por selecciónar ésta hermosa música. Saludos a Hamburgo desde Chile.🇨🇱⚓🇨🇱
Kudos to whomever uploaded this lustrous music!
These works are beyond description
Magnifica música gracias
美しい曲に背景画像も美しい！！
Perfect! Beautifully modulated composition.
The club can’t Handel these tracks!
The sarabande from "Almira" was later reused as the aria "Penna tiranna" in Handel's Italian opera "Amadigi" And I thought that "Rodrigo" was from Handel's Florentine period -performed at the Medici villa at Pratolino-not from Handel's Hamburg period.
Hi. According to Peter Holman in the notes to the recording, Rodrigo certainly was written for Florence, and it was probably first performed there in November 1707. The overture is still largely in the Franco-German style, and a number of scholars have suggested that it began life as an independent work, written in Hamburg before Händel left for Italy.
performed & period need not imply the same thing. ; )
*@kaloarepo288* The sarabande heard here is from Act I "Almira", which was certainly used afterwards in "Amadigi di Gaula" as "Penna tiranna", while "Lascia ch'io pianga" is another sarabande from Act III Almira's.
sí, lo recuerdo
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Was the Hamburg stay before his corroboration with Corelli? His later works sound so much like Corelli and the Italian baroque masters.
Yes, before meeting Corelli.
His concerti grossi are modeled after Corelli, but Handel's style is much more contrapuntal, complex, and elaborate. I don't see so much similarity. Corelli did not compose anything vocal or choral. A minor composer.
Is the Parley of Instruments still alive ?? Cannot find any website .....
Who is the drawing artist? Reminds me of Piranesi
It´s a decoration for a festival in honour of George I of Great Britain at Hamburg´s Oper am Gänsemarkt (1727). That´s all I know.
The guitarist/lutenist/theorbist is excellent. I wonder who that is? Isn't it Nigel North himself, by any chance?
Hi, they are Elizabeth Kenny and William Carter
@@calefonxcalectric Thank you. The usual members of the Parley.
Ad at 3:55
Can't tell the difference between this and Telemann
This period in music has some unbelievable magic, doesnt it? Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Telemann are but the most known names, but I keep being stunned by how many great composers were then, of whom we know little about. It is bliss to be able to learn and listen more. Thanks TH-cam, thanks all the people who contribute
@@jelsberx i discovered a lot of Italian guys I'd never heard of, like Brescianello and Sammartini. Its great
If you listen long enough and closely to both composers you can tell the difference. Telemann's overture style is somewhat more French and modern (galant) and bright, Handel's is somewhat more Italianate and theatrical (operatic) and dramatic and he is better at melody and counterpoint and is more vigorous and spontaneous and is a master of musical rhetoric. He has a stronger personality and greater emotional capability. In these works you can tell that he is already within reach of the greatness of his Dixit Dominus and operas and the Water Music.
No doubt partly because Handel borrowed copiously from Telemann.
@@lauterunvollkommenheit4344 He only borrowed in a few works from Telemann's Tafelmusik which was published in the 1730s.
Handel is mainly remembered because he was a pushy careerist who made the maximum of his connections and managed his reputation brilliantly. A lot of his occasional music is hideous even by the tone deaf standards of official state and courtly music in his period. The operas he built his career on are tedious filler written for a tasteless and ignorant audience. He did well in the vinyl era because his work could be issued in selections or highlights, compiling together the good moments he was capable of producing in amongst all the repetitious dreck. And you can't completely ruin the innately pleasant sound of a competently orchestrated band playing simple changes, however dull and venal you might be. Anyway this is a really nice recording. The harpsichordist and the lutanist in particular are genuinely spirited and there are moments which are almost as pleasant as listening to a beginner modestly strumming a guitar or something.
What utter drivel!
@@jeffreyhopes6561 Is Handel notably a better musician than Gottfried Finger or Charles Avison? Does he approach the level of emotional and musical insight achieved by less remembered figures like C.P.E. Bach or D. Scarlatti? What about genuinely important musicians like J. S. Bach or Rameau who revolutionised music theory and practice? Nope. He's very much a third rate composer. But he was a better impressario and leveraged his connections at court and in the theatre world to make a career of much more significance than his talent warranted. I don't really see that as drivel. It was the dominant opinion on Handel for 200 years until the vinyl era came along and Handel's typically rambling, tedious work started to be edited down into highlights.
@@sensibility1174 Well I don't find his operas tedious and I'm sure I'm not the only one!
@@jeffreyhopes6561 Well maybe you just have the appalling taste of a pretentious early 18th century London merchant trying to buy his way into the Hanoverian aristocracy then! Just kidding. Some of the songs are good and he is capable of interesting moments; so in the theatrical abridgements and highlights of his otherwise endless oratorios that pass for Handel these days he's actually not that bad. What's your favourite Handel opera?
@@sensibility1174 Handel is actually the first composer that had a biography written, already the year after his death. Years before that a statue of him was erected in a London park. There are more contemporary pictures of him than almost any person before the camera was invented according to the Handel museum in Halle. He has never been forgotten or rediscovered. There must be something you have detected almost nobody else has. Maybe their ears are just put where they belong. Who knows.
Magnifico!