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Robert King - Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks, Four Coronation Anthems (1989)

Posted By: tirexiss

Date: 14 Sep 2019 07:31:19

Handel at his most jubilant here, hymning the glories of Georgian England in his half-official role as composer laureate: the four anthems written for George II's coronation in 1727 and the Music for the Royal Fireworks that celebrated his victories more than 20 years later. Robert King directs very capable performances using period instruments and, correctly, male voices. He does not use soloists; the requirement is ambiguous here and there is, I think, some justification for supposing that in Westminster Abbey Handel would have used choral forces or at least doubling (as indicated in the first movement of My heart is inditing) for the possible solo passages. King gives a spacious, exciting account of Zadok the priest, with the brass instruments unusually prominent in the tuttis. One or two 'refinements' of dynamics in the final section create, to my mind, a slight loss of energy in the last chorus, but the effect as a whole is good. I particularly enjoyed The King shall rejoice, the opening movement of which is done with great spirit, and the closing ''Alleluja'' goes with a swing too. I felt in some of the choruses, however, that the choral sound seemed a shade gluey, over-legato and needing more airiness, and the effect sometimes becomes a shade oppressive this happens most perhaps in My heart but also in Let thy hand be strengthened (where the contrast in tempo between the last two choruses struck me as too marked). Still, highly acceptable performances, though I would not recommend a change to anyone who has the excellent Preston/Archiv Produktion disc cited above, which should be reckoned the most stylish and musicianly version available.
King has the advantage, however, of including a substantial extra item, the Music for the Royal Fireworks in what is claimed as the ''First ever recording on period instruments of the original 1749 scoring''—no doubt correctly, for it is pretty difficult to get together 24 period oboes, 12 period bassoons and nine each of period horns and trumpets—though many readers will, I am sure, remember the historic Mackerras Pye mono LP recording, of course with modern instruments issued first, 30 years ago in June 1959. Yet authentidty is perhaps a chimera here: we know very well that Handel, although required to produce a piece for ''warlike instruments'' (i.e. wind and percussion) bridled, and demanded to be allowed to use ''violeens'' too—and if the count of a contemporary news reporter isn't exaggerated, he probably had his way, for the band numbered 100 rather than the 60 or so that the 'warlike instruments' alone would have accounted for. And certainly Handel's later versions were always for strings and wind.
On listening to this recording, I have to say that I can see why Handel wanted strings. The wind-band sound is certainly imposing and stirring in its way but there is a rather uncouth, hectic quality to it, no doubt something to do with intonation en masse. Well, I don't want to put anyone off the chance to sample the kind of sound that may have been on offer in London's Green Park that damp April evening in 1749. I do not much enjoy the swells King draws from his band in some of the dialogue passages in the slow part of the Overture nor the added trumpet flourish at its end- and ''La paix'' seems a bit lifeless and heavy—one regrets here King's generosity over repeats. Still, the experiment was well worth trying, and obviously a lot of people had a lot of fun.

discogs

Track List:

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

01. Zadok the Priest [0:05:37.25]
02. My heart is inditing [0:02:46.63]
03. My heart is inditing - Kings daughters [0:02:58.35]
04. My heart is inditing - Upon thy right hand [0:03:05.37]
05. My heart is inditing - Kings shall [0:03:11.08]
06. Let thy hand be strengthened [0:03:02.35]
07. Let thy hand be strengthened - let justice [0:02:58.67]
08. Let thy hand be strengthened - alleluia [0:01:55.18]
09. The king shall rejoice [0:02:44.00]
10. The king shall rejoice - exceeding [0:03:00.72]
11. The king shall rejoice - Glory [0:02:35.38]
12. The king shall rejoice - Alleluia [0:02:45.62]
13. Music for the royal fireworks - Overture [0:09:48.45]
14. Music for the royal fireworks - Bourree [0:01:41.53]
15. Music for the royal fireworks - La Paix [0:03:34.52]
16. Music for the royal fireworks - La rejouissance [0:02:19.55]
17. Music for the royal fireworks - Menuet I and II [0:02:46.05]

Performers:
The Choir of New College, Oxford
The King's Consort [on period instruments]
Robert King - conductor

EAC Log

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011

EAC extraction logfile from 22. April 2013, 14:09

Robert King / Handel - Music for the Royal Fireworks, Four Coronation Anthems - Robert King

Used drive : TSSTcorpCDDVDW TS-L633M Adapter: 1 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 6
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 320 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -8 -V -T "TITLE=%title%" -T "ARTIST=%artist%" -T "ALBUMARTIST=%albumartist%" -T "ALBUM=%albumtitle%" -T "DATE=%year%" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%tracknr%" -T "TRACKTOTAL=%numtracks%" -T "GENRE=%genre%" -T "COMMENT=%comment%" -T "PERFORMER=%albuminterpret%" -T "COMPOSER=%composer%" %source% -o %dest%

TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
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1 | 0:00.00 | 5:37.25 | 0 | 25299
2 | 5:37.25 | 2:46.63 | 25300 | 37812
3 | 8:24.13 | 2:58.35 | 37813 | 51197
4 | 11:22.48 | 3:05.37 | 51198 | 65109
5 | 14:28.10 | 3:11.08 | 65110 | 79442
6 | 17:39.18 | 3:02.35 | 79443 | 93127
7 | 20:41.53 | 2:58.67 | 93128 | 106544
8 | 23:40.45 | 1:55.18 | 106545 | 115187
9 | 25:35.63 | 2:44.00 | 115188 | 127487
10 | 28:19.63 | 3:00.72 | 127488 | 141059
11 | 31:20.60 | 2:35.38 | 141060 | 152722
12 | 33:56.23 | 2:45.62 | 152723 | 165159
13 | 36:42.10 | 9:48.45 | 165160 | 209304
14 | 46:30.55 | 1:41.53 | 209305 | 216932
15 | 48:12.33 | 3:34.52 | 216933 | 233034
16 | 51:47.10 | 2:19.55 | 233035 | 243514
17 | 54:06.65 | 2:46.05 | 243515 | 255969

Range status and errors

Selected range

Filename C:\Users\JS\Desktop\Handel\Handel - Music for the Royal Fireworks, Four Coronation Anthems - Robert King.wav

Peak level 100.0 %
Extraction speed 0.8 X
Range quality 99.8 %
Test CRC F11435ED
Copy CRC F11435ED
Copy OK

No errors occurred

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5 track(s) accurately ripped
12 track(s) could not be verified as accurate

Some tracks could not be verified as accurate

End of status report

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