Joyce DiDonato, Sandrine Piau, and Handel

I have hundreds of recordings of the music of Handel and Bach. During the current long Covid lockdown, they are a great comfort. They include an immense library of recordings of Handel's music – duets, cantatas, operas, and oratorios, as well as many recordings of excerpts, particularly of opera arias. Ditto a library of Bach recordings, plus many others of 18th-century music (including that of Purcell who died in 1695 at the age of 36). The 18^th century with Bach, Handel, Pergolesi, Vivaldi, the Scarlattis, Rameau, Haydn and Mozart has become, at the moment, my listening period of choice. A pity about all those 19^th and 20th-century composers for the moment, until my tastes change again and the wind swings round to the 19^th century.

Stars of my listening have been Sandrine Piau and Joyce DiDonato. Piau has an angelic voice (although her diction isn't great). DiDonato has a highly dramatic mezzo-soprano voice, with excellent diction. Together they make a fine pair of contrasted listening, even in much of the same music. Is there any more heartbreaking air in the whole of music than Purcell's “Dido's Lament”? Joyce DiDonato (with Il Pomo d'Oro) sings it most movingly, as she does Handel's “Lascia ch'io pianga” from Rinaldo. Sandrine Piau in arias from Handel's Opera Seria (Naïve, 2004 with Les Talens Lyriques and Christophe Rousset) gives us twelve Handel arias to complement her previous Handel CD “Between Heaven and Earth” that I wrote about enthusiastically a short while ago. DiDonato's CD of “In War and Peace”, an Erato CD from 2016, recorded in the South Tyrol, makes for over an hour of happy listening. Bach and Handel spent a lot of care over their accompanying orchestras, featuring different colours. Since singers can be a pretty unreliable lot, subject to colds and sniffles, it made sense to ensure that the band could always play up with interesting music to distract from vocal foibles. The band members would have been a pretty known quantity, whilst singers varied according to the season. It is important in a performance, then, that the band be given equal prominence with the singers. Too many recording producers, on the evidence of many I have been listening to, follow the pop music norm of lead singer with a big microphone up-front, whilst the “backing group” shares a small microphone towards the back. Not good, in Bach and Handel. Joyce DiDonato's recording of “In War and Peace” shows how it should be done. Airs and arias by Handel, Purcell and a few others are beautifully sung, beautifully accompanied, and beautifully balanced by the recording engineers.

To end this enthusiastic write-up on a scowling note: A burst of crass American commercialism by Erato (Warner). The makers of DiDonato's dress, jewellery, and make-up are all listed. On a CD liner note! No one tells us where Maxim Emelyanychev (the conductor) bought his shoes, nor to which barber he reported. Not a word about who made Handel's and Purcell's wigs. We need to know these things.