Music
Dunedin Consort & Polish Radio Choir
ICE Congress Centre, Krakow
Keith Bruce
****
AS far as we currently know, only bass Matthew Brook from this Easter Sunday concert will be present among the line-up of soloists when Edinburgh hears John Butt’s interpretation of Handel’s Samson at the Festival in August. And with organ interludes filling the intervals, as was apparently the case at its 1743 London premiere, that promises to be a rather different evening.
It also begins at the more sensible time of 6pm, while this showpiece of Krakow’s Misteria Paschalia festival (of which Professor Butt was this year’s guest director) started at eight, which meant a midnight finish. Samson is long - about an hour longer than Messiah, which Handel wrote immediately before it - and, with a narrative that expresses itself in flashback until the final part, for a long time nothing very much happens.
That leap to the present tense, however, where Brook - singing Samson’s father, Manoach - is interrupted by the instrumentalists expressing the destruction happening elsewhere, is far from the only dramatic moment in the work. Nor are the tenor aria Total eclipse! and the soprano showstopper Let the bright seraphim the only fine Handel melodies in the score - although James Way, a slightly-built Samson, and Fflur Wyn made the very most of both of those.
With a total of eight soloists, eight Dunedin singers joined by 20 from the Polish Radio Choir, and an orchestra with four cellos and eleven fiddles, this was surely the largest Dunedin Consort ever assembled, and Butt had his forces perfectly balanced throughout. Save for the intonation of the two natural horns at the start, the instrumental playing was superb, and the continuo for the recitative-heavy score immaculate. Young chorusmaster Maria Piotrowska-Bogalecka has her singers very well-drilled too, and their enunciation was as clear as that of the soloists, where mezzo Caitlin Hulcup, in the role of Micah, Samson’s friend and - it sometimes seems - Jiminy Cricket-like conscience, was also worthy of special mention.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here