Emmanuelle Haïm / Le Concert d'Astrée HANDEL Delirio

Brian Robins’s review comment in Fanfare 29:3, “Those less concerned with Handelian style will doubtless enjoy the disc more than I have,” uttered after essentially castigating this release, captures my feeling very well. For I feel it an error to always judge performances of Handel by what we think we know he is intending. Robins calls for an “idiomatic” approach in music that has, at the very least, redefined “idiomatic” for the last hundred years. While it is true that many of the tempos here are slower than the current norm, I also think that Emmanuelle Haïm, avoiding any sense of the doctrinaire, wishes first and foremost to take every advantage of her solo instrument at hand, namely one Natalie Dessay.
Delirio amoroso is one of Handel’s major cantatas, and is here given a performance worthy of all accolades. One thing that I always try to think of first and foremost in any performance is how good is the singing , and here it is rarified indeed. No doubt that Dessay takes some liberties, but the voice is in such great shape and so utterly entrancing that all other concerns fall away, at least for me. Perhaps it is because I am not a fervent periodist that other issues seem more pedantic; but it is also a testament to the period movement that we have come so far as to begin to put musical questions above doctrine or even what we believe is shackled to a current concept of musical style and think first of beauty of expression and communicativeness of idiom.
Haïm’s continuo playing is supportive and completely within Handelian parameters of any age, while the wonderful oboe playing, soft and pliant, of Patrick Beaugiraud must also be mentioned. The other two works are equally persuasive, and this is one disc that really doesn’t see a lot of shelf life, coming down at least once a month in order to rejuvenate the spirit and cleanse the ears. If you love rapturous singing in this most lyrical of all Baroque composers, you will have to have this deserved Hall of Fame cantata recording. (FANFARE: Steven E. Ritter)