Handel: Solomon

Handel
Solomon
Ana Maria Labin, Gwendoline Blondeel (soprano), Christopher Lowrey (countertenor); Chœur de Chambre de Namur; Millenium Orchestra/Leonardo García Alarcón
Ricercar RIC449   152:08 mins (2 discs)

This is the best-ever recording of Solomon, and a highpoint for conductor Leonardo García Alarcón’s career. Organised for the 2022 Namur summer festival, the performance re-assembled artists who had worked together in Handel oratorios at previous festivals.

Drama is telescoped into scenes depicting the biblical Judgement of Solomon, with the real mother’s horror at his ruling that the child at issue be cut in two. The text otherwise celebrates God, monarch, nation and (very earthly) love. Action resides in the score, crafted by Handel to match the wordbook’s flowery images and exalted declarations. Alarcón excels in picking out moods implied by the music: regal or tender for Solomon’s numbers, pastoral for his wife’s love vows, brash for choral praises, feverish for the moralising priest Zadok. The band thrills to Alarcón’s gestures, delivering crisp rhythms, furious tempos – the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba is not to be missed – and languorous lines. The soloists plumb their characters: Christopher Lowrey’s Solomon boldly tosses off runs and swells sustained pitches; Gwendoline Blondeel as his consort heightens eroticism through the colours and timbres of her sighing passion; Ana Maria Labin’s Queen of Sheba is serenely radiant.

But the chorus is the star of this show. Handel reserved his most ingenious writing in Solomon for his world-class choristers, and the Namur chamber choir is their match. In intricate choruses, the singers channel their gorgeous vocalism into a thrusting execution of darting fugues and towering homophony.

Berta Joncus