Georg Friedrich Händel

Music for the time of the plague. On what music is there to fall back on? Luigi Dallopicalla? Karl-Heinz Stockhausen? Pierre Boulez? Arnold Schönberg? For me, it is above all a return to my traditional loves: Johann Sebastian Bach, and Georg Friedrich Händel. Contemporaries by birth and geography, but oh so different in their music. I have re-embarked on the cantatas of Bach, and on an 8-CD Glossa set of the music Handel wrote during his Italian stay in around 1707 when he was just 22 years old. What extraordinary powers of invention the young Handel had! Melody after melody, all with interesting and varied accompaniments; in those days, you either wrote music that your audience enjoyed, or you starved. There is also some brilliant writing for solo violin in many of the arias, presumably to show off the prowess of Arcangelo Corelli who often led the various bands at the time, notably in the cantata Il Delirio Amoroso.  Le Cantata per il Cardinal Pamphili features the highly esteemed voice of Roberta Invernizzi, with La Risonanza directed by Fabio Bonizzoni, an all-Italian caste as with all eight Glossa CDs of Handel's cantatas and duetti. The absence of angst and trauma in this music is a welcome antidote to the current world. Over 300 years since it was first written to entertain the various Italian cardinals and potentates, this music still has the power to enthral and raise spirits. Long live Georg Friedrich!