Saturday 7 November 2009

A big pat on the back for Brilliant Classics for Volume I of its promised complete Handel cantata series. Prices are eminently sensible (ie, low) for these CDs. The performances of the first four cantatas conducted by Marco Vitale, with Contrasto Armonico and Stefanie True are excellent. Vitale uses a compromise "Roman pitch" of A=392, and this gives an attractive mellow sound without the screeching and rasping that often characterises "baroque" performances.

Ms True is Canadian, and although her Italian sounds accurate, she does not relish individual words in the way a native Italian speaker would. A pity; but at least she sings prettily and in tune. It is a problem with vocal music that no one sings it quite like a native-speaker does. Anyway, a very minor flaw in a superbly recorded, performed and sung CD.

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