Vivaldi - Gloria · Handel - Gloria · Dixit Dominus / English Baroque Soloists · Monteverdi Choir · Gardiner

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The Gloria in excelsis Deo, recently announced as a newly discovered work by Handel, has actually been known to scholars for many years. Nobody paid it much attention until Professor Hans Joachim Marx of Hamburg University certified the piece as authentic while editing Handel's Latin church music for the ongoing Halle edition of the composer's works. Is it the genuine article? Anthony Hicks, in the excellent booklet notes, seems more judicious than some in his assessment. If it is Handel's, which he considers likely, then it may well belong to his teenage years in Halle, from which almost nothing survives save a Laudate pueri setting. Whatever its provenance, this is a most attractive little work, full of rewards for both performers and listeners.John Eliot Gardiner's interpretation, with Gillian Keith as soloist, has persuaded me of what I wasn't sure on hearing the first recording of the Gloria, that this is indeed authentic Handel. The brilliant acoustic, putting a burnish on the playing of the English Baroque Soloists, together with Keith's assured and sensitive handling of the vocal line throughout, enhances that sense of grand design – can we call it anything so prosaic as 'forward planning'? – at the heart of Handel's best works. It's much easier, too, on this version, to play the association game, with echoes from other pieces in the established canon – a cadence here, an incipit there, a phrase anticipating the Chandos Anthems, the Utrecht Te Deum or even the first English oratorios. Keith is as finely attuned as Gardiner to the interplay of exuberance and pensiveness here, Handel's 'allegro and penseroso' as it were, before he'd even read Milton's poems.This is a heart-stirring performance, which leads naturally to the Dixit Dominus, one of Handel's most demanding vocal works and in essence a tribute, when he'd barely got there, to what the travel brochures call 'the magic of Italy'. The piece, which may have been part of the so-called 'Carmelite Vespers' for which Handel is known to have furnished other compositions, is a stunning mixture of musical learning, homage to earlier styles, practical risk-taking and bold, dramatic effect. Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir do this sort of thing as easily as falling off a log. I'm never quite persuaded that the conductor sees Handel as much more than an inspired circus artist, pulling musical rabbits out of hats and doing operatic triple somersaults, but his approach is unfailingly attention-grabbing and makes us listen to the notes as well as the performers. Solos here are expertly taken by individual choir members and the instrumental sound has a grain and muscle to it which are ideally suited to the restless surge of Handel's invention.The disc begins with what will always be the most popular of Vivaldi's choral works, the Gloria, RV589, probably composed for a thanksgiving Mass for victories over the Turks. There's a fine swashbuckling quality to this performance, but Gardiner manages to avoid making Vivaldi's idiosyncratic musical language seem vulgar or naïve, unearthing the complexities beneath the apparent simplicity and directness of engagement. The pulse of individual movements is beautifully caught, especially in the bouncing 'Laudamus te' and the affecting dialogue of the 'Domine Deus'. Once again the acoustic is lavish, indeed thoroughly Baroque. The disc as a whole offers an excellent illustration of what that much-discussed word actually means in musical terms. Jonathan B. Keates

Vivaldi - Gloria · Handel - Gloria · Dixit Dominus / English Baroque Soloists · Monteverdi Choir · Gardiner, Music, Antonio Vivaldi, George Frideric Handel, John Eliot Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir The English Baroque Soloists, Chamber Music & Recitals, Choral, Classical, Classical Composers, Classical Music, Gloria, Hymn, Vocal

Average customer rating: Excellent service, prompt delivery, excellent product Gardiner's Gloria is exquisite Another valuable account of Handel's Gloria I beg to disagree! Two stars, and lucky to get that

Vivaldi - Gloria · Handel - Gloria · Dixit Dominus / English Baroque Soloists · Monteverdi Choir · Gardiner Antonio Vivaldi , George Frideric Handel , John Eliot Gardiner , and The Monteverdi Choir The English Baroque Soloists Manufacturer: Philips ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD All Works by Handel | Handel, George Frideric | ( H ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music All Works by Vivaldi | Vivaldi, Antonio | ( V ) | Featured Composers, A-Z | Classical | Styles | Music General | Baroque (c.1600-1750) | Historical Periods | Classical | Styles | Music Chamber Music | Forms & Genres | Classical (c.1770-1830) | Historical Periods | Classical | Styles | Music General | Sacred & Religious | Classical | Styles | Music General | Classical | Styles | Music General | Chamber Music | Classical | Styles | Music General | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music Hymns | Vocal Non-Opera | Opera & Vocal | Styles | Music Similar Items: Handel: Gloria; Dixit Dominus / Kirkby * Royal Academy of Music Baroque Orchestra * Cummings Handel - Solomon / Watkinson, Argenta, Hendricks, Rolfe Johnson, EBS, Monteverdi Choir, Gardiner Bach: Cantatas for Ascension Day Handel - Carmelite Vespers 1707 / Feldman · Kirkby · Van Evera · M. Cable · M. Nichols · Cornwell · Thomas · Parrott Pilgrimage to Santiago ASIN: B000050IU0 Release Date: 2001-11-13

Customer Reviews:

Excellent service, prompt delivery, excellent product.......2007-06-12

Gardiner's Gloria is exquisite.......2004-12-24

Another valuable account of Handel's Gloria.......2002-06-17

Unquestionably, Gardiner's thoughtful account of the 'Dixit Dominus' is to be preferred to the archive one from 1986 on the BIS CD. But why the Vivaldi? There are better versions out there, and Gardiner of all people would have been capable of coming up with another matching Handel offering - say a Motet like 'Saeviat tellus inter rigores' or the Psalm 'Nisi Dominus'.

Still, this is a worthwhile disc. Handel's 'Gloria' is new enough to the general listening public to require a variety of interpretations and approaches. For my money Kirby will remain the benchmark soloist, but Keith has offered a spirited response

I beg to disagree!.......2002-01-04

This recording is not "disdainful" or "languid!" Far from it! I have several choral conductor friends who appreciate the many subtleties of this recording over the 1978 version by Gardiner or the newer one from Minkowski. The string playing is outstanding...I guess John Eliot now has a deeper understanding of this work after 20 years! I would surmise that he understood that the work's tension not only rests on the voices of the singers and the choir, but also in the orchestral writing as well...listen to the tight crecendos in the string section in movement 5! It's menacing, jubilatory, tempered with enough balance of the intellect that keeps it from becoming "dull"

I see this recording as a valedictory one for John Eliot and his forces...a visionary who doesnt need to show off nor a conductor who's out to impress someone with loud voices and heavily accented/staccato readings(that was him a few decades ago!).

Get this record! Its wonderful stuff! But you also ought to get the 1978 recording of the Dixit Dominus (though it has less music in it, only Handel's Zadok the Priest is included).

Two stars, and lucky to get that.......2001-12-29

I'm giving this disc two stars only because of the Handel Gloria, which is indeed an attractive and inventive little piece, well sung and played. The Vivaldi is unexceptionable. The real outrage is the Dixit Dominus, one of the most vivid and exciting works in the choral repertoire. It's performed here in a languid, disdainful fashion, at tempos that jog peacefully along without urgency and with signers (both choral and solo) who sound barely interested in the force of the text or the drama of its setting. "We sing this sort of thing all the time" is the attitude, and it's deadly to this piece, which notorious for its vocal demands. Making it sound easy makes it sound dull.

Try, instead, Marc Minkowski's recent Deutsche Grammaphon version: it's recorded triumphantly live with soloists who will rock your world, and includes most of the rest of Handel's Italian music. This was a young man seeking to make an impression, and boy does he! Gardiner's Handel sounds like a bored Brill Building hack, pumping out another cantata to pay the rent.

Track Listings:

1. Vivaldi: Sacred Music [Hybrid SACD] [Hybrid SACD] [SACD]
2. Voyage
3. Wagner: Flying Dutchman [Import]
4. American Music for Tuba: Something Old Something New
5. An Introduction to Verdi's Il trovatore
6. Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons / 3 Violin Concertos - Giuliano Carmignola / Venice Baroque Orchestra / Andrea Marcon
7. Argentinian Songs
8. Bach: Sonatas for Viola da Gamba and Harpsichord
9. Bach: Wir Danken Dir, Gott
10. Beethoven: Triple Concerto; Schumann: Piano Concerto

Track Listings

track listings

Track Listings

In a Bar, Under the Sea

King Oedipus (After Sophocles)

Hitchin' A Ride [CD-single]

Domino [Original recording remastered]

A Great Inhumane Adventure [Live]

Love Songs [Import]

Mary Poppins [Cast Recording]

Jacqueline du Pré & Daniel Barenboim - Schumann: Cello & Piano Concerto

Kicking On [Enhanced]

Kaija Saariaho: L'aile du songe

Jazz Legends: Saxophone [Import]

Hecho Cuba V.2 [Import]

Grandes Exitos

The Early Years

Night Time