Composer of the Week: Handel

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: George Frideric Handel (1685-1759): Rejuvenation: 1738-1739

Consequences: 1733-1734

Rejuvenation: 1738-1739

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), Rejuvenation: 1738-1739

Donald Macleod explores Handel’s creative rejuvenation following a debilitating stroke.

Donald Macleod explores how Handel’s recovery from a stroke, along with the rapprochement with many of his previous performers, led to his creative rejuvenation.

This week of programmes looks at Handel’s life and work during an important decade of his life. The 1730s saw Handel create some of his best-loved works, but also saw him fall out with singers and patrons in London, endure a stroke and attendant poor mental health, and mourn the death of one of his chief supporters, Queen Caroline.

In this episode, Donald Macleod explores how Handel’s recovery from a stroke, along with the rapprochement with many of his previous performers, led to his creative rejuvenation.

Handel’s financial situation was still precarious, to the extent that his friends staged a benefit concert in his honour at the King’s Theatre. He composed Serse, one of his greatest later operas, which prefigures Mozart’s Da Ponte operas; he became a founder member of the Royal Society of Musicians, and was celebrated in stone, his statue being unveiled in Vauxhall Gardens. 

Opera: Serse, HWV 40
Aria: Crude Furie degl’orridi abissi
Recitative: Perfidi! E ancor osate
Aria: Caro voi seite all’alma
Chorus: Ritorno a noi la calma
Anne Sofie von Otter, mezzo-soprano (Serse)
Giovanni Furlanetto, bass (Ariodate)
Lawrence Zazzo, countertenor (Arsamene)
Elisabeth Norberg-Schulz, soprano (Romilda)
Silvia Tro Santafe, mezzo-soprano (Amastre)
Antonio Abete, bass (Elviro)
Sandrine Piau, soprano (Atalanta)
Les Arts Florissants Chorus
Les Arts Florissants
William Christie, conductor

Oratorio: Saul, HWV 53 
Funeral March; Chorus: Mourn, Israel, mourn thy Beauty lost; Chorus: Gird on thy Sword, thou Man of Might (Act 3) 
RIAS Chamber Chorus
Concerto Köln
René Jacobs, conductor

Organ Concerto in F major, “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale”, HWV 295
I. Larghetto 
II. Allegro
Simon Preston, organ
English Concert 
Trevor Pinnock, conductor

Trio Sonata in F major, Op. 5 No. 6, HWV 401
IV. Allegro
V. Minuet: Allegro moderato
VI. Andante
London Handel Players

Oratorio: Israel in Egypt,  HWV 54 
Chorus: He gave them hailstones for rain
Chorus: He send a thick darkness over all the land
Chorus: He smote all the first-born of Egypt
Chorus: But as for His people, He led them forth like sheep
Taverner Choir
Taverner Players
Andrew Parrott, conductor

Produced by Iain Chambers

Composer of the Week: George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod looks at Handel's life and work during an important decade of his life.

Donald Macleod looks at Handel's life and work during an important decade of his life, the 1730s, which saw Handel create some of his best-loved works.

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George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)

Rejuvenation: 1738-1739

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