This concert was given to bring the triennial Handel Institute conference, this year under the title ‘Handel at Court’, to a close. The conference covered various topics associated with Handel’s music and life at the courts with which Handel had contact, including those of George I and II, James Brydges, and the court at Hanover. Although there were no papers on Handel’s music written for his Roman patrons, the concert took music written for their courts as its theme. Mostly for chamber performances with modest forces, Handel’s music from this period was an appropriate choice for a concert within the chamber setting of the Foundling Museum.
Having left the limitations of his hometown of Halle in 1703 for Hamburg to peruse an interest in opera, Handel soon realised after writing four operas (of which only Almira survives) that a career in Italian opera necessitated a period of study in Italy, where Handel subsequently stayed between 1706 and 1710 before moving back to Northern Europe and settling in London from 1712. Handel spent the majority of his time in Italy in Rome under the patronage of Marchese Franceso Maria Ruspoli, Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilij, Cardinal Carlo Colonna and Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni at different times. Rome did not offer Italian opera, but his patrons were members of the Accademia degli Arcadi (‘The Arcadian Academy’) founded in 1690, one year after the death of the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden, who had brought together a circle of poets, musicians and artists interested in new directions of Italian poetry, librettos and their associated musical entertainments. By the time Handel was in Rome, the meetings of the Academy often took place at the palaces of its members on Sunday afternoon and were known as ‘conversazioni’, offering composers the opportunity to perform their latest works. Handel wrote a substantial number of cantatas for such gatherings following in the footsteps of composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti who was one of the most prolific composers of the genre with over 600 cantatas attributed to his name. Handel, although under the patronage of members of the Academy, was never actually a member himself, however several other prominent Roman musicians with whom he had contact were, including Bernardo Pasquini, Francesco Gasparini, Benedetto Marcello, Arcangelo Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti, all of whom composed and performed at ‘conversazioni’.
The performers at the Foundling Museum ‘conversazione’, which was organised by Gavin Kibble and programmed by David Vickers, were drawn from recent graduates of ‘leading British conservatories’; although a young group of performers, they worked well together. The concert opened with works by two of Handel’s Roman contemporaries. Firstly a trio sonata (op. 2, no. 12) by Corelli, published in 1685 and dedicated to his (and later Handel’s) patron Benedetto Pamphilij, in which Julia Kuhn and Anna Curzon did an excellent job of highlighting the dialogue between the first and second violin parts. Secondly the cantata Su le sponde del Tebro by Alessandro Scarlatti, which owing to its clear reference to the river Tiber, was almost certainly written for Rome and likely performed at an event associated with the Arcadian Academy. Despite the large number of cantatas written by Scarlatti, most are for continuo accompaniment with only around 60 using additional instruments. Su le sponde del Tebro falls in this second category and employs a difficult obligato trumpet part with a high tessitura, and although he did not quite hit some of the very highest notes (there are few performers who can) Russell Gilmour gave an excellent performance, as did the soprano Beatrice Leclere, who captured the meaning of the text and blended well with the solo trumpet in the first aria ‘Contentatevi, o fidi pensieri’. In the recitatives and three further arias that followed, Leclere gave a good interpretation showing continued engagement with the emotions found in the text ranging from unhappiness, suffering and sorrow in ‘Infelici miei lumi’ to questioning the stars about the reasons for grief and martyrdom for love in ‘Dite almeno, astri crudeli’ and the lively close (with the return of the obligato trumpet, which does not play in the middle two arias) describing how the heart should cease to weep, when the only thing that remains to lament is the cruelty of a faithless lover.
The second half of the programme was dedicated to works by Handel, using the Sonata (Larghetto) in G minor (HWV 580) for solo keyboard as a bridge between the two halves. Stylishly played by Tom Foster, the short, single movement work ends in the dominant key of D major, giving a sense of it being unfinished and leaving the audience wondering if there should be another movement to follow or whether this might have been continued as an improvisation. This problem was, however, solved by the next item on the programme,the cantata Ah! crudel, nel pianto mio (HWV 78) which continues in D major. Unfortunately the effect of this sensible piece of programming was obscured by the time required for the other performers to return to the stage after the sonata. An alternative approach might have been to go directly from the Sonata into the cantata, with those performers required for the cantata remaining on stage during the harpsichord sonata. Ah! crudel, which describes the lament of a lover complaining that the object of her desire is cruel, is scored for oboes, violins, viola, soprano and continuo, and was probably written in Rome for Ruspoli. An exact date of composition is not known, but a bill for copying the music appears in the Ruspoli account books on 10 October 1711, after Handel had left Rome. The opening Sinfonia for two oboes in a lively dialogue with the violins was performed with energy, precision and careful attention to the imitation between the parts, followed by the first aria, which describes the cruelty of the lover, portrayed superbly by Gabriella Cassidy. She also did a fine job with the accompanied recitative that depicts a storm with lightning and the sun that breaks through the clouds, adding plenty of drama. Especially well performed was, however, the closing aria of the cantata which, after the sadness and torment of the previous movements, depicts the hope of sorrows being turned into joy. Cassidy performed the coloraturas with ease and on the occasions that they are doubled by the oboe, they were perfectly together. The concert concluded with the duet Amor gioie mi porge (HWV 180), offering the opportunity to hear the two sopranos together, and, as in the solo cantatas, they both did an excellent job of realising the text which presents how the delights and sweetness of love can be turned into torments and bitterness through jealousy; a fitting conclusion after the themes of the two cantatas.
On the whole, this young group of musicians played with energy and enthusiasm and I look forward to hearing more from them and the two sopranos. It was also refreshing to hear a performance of these works without the addition of a plucked string instrument. The music was ideally suited to the space available at the Foundling Museum, convincingly recreating what a ‘conversazione’ might have been like in Rome.
Gabriella Cassidy, Beatrice Leclere: sopranos
Russell Gilmour: trumpet
Leo Duarte, Merlin Harrison: oboes
Julia Kuhn, Anna Curzon: violins
Jordan Bowron: viola
Gavin Kibble: cello
Tom Foster: harpsichord