Handel was a dextrous composer when he set to work: he wrote this large oratorio in little more than five weeks, between 5 May and 13 June 1748. The first performance was at Covent Garden on 17 March the following year and it obviously didn’t make much of an impression. It was given three times that season and then it was another ten years before it was dusted off and played twice, heavily cut.
It has never been able to challenge some of the more dramatic – or shall we say operatic – oratorios but there is one number here that most music-lovers know: the sinfonia that opens part III, popularly known as The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba. This is lively and vivacious music and it reflects the character of the oratorio at large, where there is a high proportion of fast and springy music. It is spectacularly orchestrated with lots of timpani and trumpets – not uncommon in Handel to be sure, but there’s also very inventive word-painting. For example the chorus that concludes part I, where the chorus sing While nightingales lull them to sleep with their song and a solo violin imitates the birds’ trills.
I have no closer knowledge of existing rival recordings, except John Eliot Gardiner’s Philips version, set down more than twenty years ago – how time flies! Like Martini on the present set Gardiner also employs period instruments. The biggest difference is the number of them: Martini has fifteen strings, Gardiner twenty-seven. Gardiner also employs more woodwinds and horns, thus producing a larger sound while still getting the transparency that one associates with period instruments. This doesn’t mean that Martini’s band lacks heft, on the contrary his players have all the power needed. Without going into detailed comparisons I can truthfully say that Martini in no way comes out second best. He secures a vitality in the playing from the first chords of the overture that he never allows to slacken. The whole performance is permeated with zest and joy – which of course doesn’t mean that the more deeply felt inward and brooding numbers lack feeling.
By and large this live performance finds the right balance and recorded straight off at a single live performance one gets a feeling of continuity, which is not always the case with studio efforts, recorded in bits and pieces. The choir, which Martini himself started in 1965, is well versed in Martini’s intentions and since they have made a speciality of Handel performances - several of them recorded by Naxos - we also feel the conviction in the singing. That it is a live recording is nothing one notices while listening; I even listened to large sections with headphones and could not detect any unwanted noises.
The recording venue seems to be quite spacious, since there is an aura around the choral sound that in one or two places can seem plush, but in general it’s a well defined sound. I believe that the choir is p
