THE KING’S CONSORT
An Ode for St Cecilia’s Day
JACQUELINE DU PRÉ
In Portrait
HARD FACTS behind Saint Cecilia’s connection with music barely exist, though as a patron saint of music a flaxen-haired beauty playing an organ obviously cuts a more inspirational figure than Tom, Dick or Harry. Even if she had done nothing beyond generating Purcell’s Odes to St Cecilia, the lady would be worth saluting. This week, Hyperion presents more reasons to rejoice, with a recording by the King’s Consort of Handel’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day, written to a celebrated text by John Dryden (CDA 67463).
Handel dashed this off very quickly in 1739, using the customary short cut of the hard-pressed: other people’s work. But even if motifs do stem from a harpsichord collection by Gottlieb Muffat (son of the more famous Georg), Handel turns them to his own account with that imaginative brio that always ensures listening pleasure.
Robert King and his vocalists and instrumentalists have their own trademark panache, and collectors of his other Handel recordings will not be disappointed. Newcomers to the territory should try track eight, The Trumpet’s loud clangour: a tenor aria with trumpet, of course, and the kind of rhythmic snap and jollity that makes you glad to be alive.
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Minor abrasions apart, the choral sound stays smooth and alert. James Gilchrist bounces securely through the tenor numbers, while Carolyn Sampson’s bright ringing soprano is unstoppable — though I am now beginning to wish this talented singer had other hues to offer as well. The recording ambience at St Jude on the Hill, London, is extremely listener-friendly, and so, above all, is the music it serves: 48 minutes of delight, rounded out attractively on the CD by a smaller Cecilia offering by Handel, the Italian cantata Cecilia, volgi un sguardo. Reach for your wallet, do.
Thinking of images of Saint Cecilia, your mind might reasonably conjure up Jacqueline du Pré communing with Elgar and her cello. More than 30 years after multiple sclerosis ended her playing career, du Pré seems so much a part of our cultural heritage (and at times gossip) that further repackaging seems unnecessary. But no. There is the DVD format to consider: the perfect medium for experiencing du Pré in the flesh in the only way now possible, in the films of Christopher Nupen.
Opus Arte are collaborating with Nupen’s Allegro Films on a series of DVD releases; the first is Jacqueline du Pré in Portrait (OA CN0902 D), offering the Elgar concerto film, originally made in 1967, and a straight performance of the Beethoven Ghost piano trio with Barenboim and Pinchas Zukerman, caught in colour in 1970.
The performances remain as they always were: memorable, impassioned, sometimes to an uncomfortable degree, a discomfort only heightened by Nupen’s use of a lightweight camera, then newly available, able to be operated close to musicians without any distracting whirr. Look at the sweat on du Pré’s brow! And Barenboim’s fancy cufflinks in the Beethoven: surely they’re restricting his wrists! So many distractions to fight. Even in an age that loves to pry, TV cameras at the Proms never crawl over the performers the way Nupen’s cameras do.
But provided you accept the need for extreme discipline while viewing, this DVD deserves its place on the shelves; ideally perhaps next to The British Cello Phenomenon (Cello Classics CC1010), a tasty recent CD set surveying 29 British artists down the century, and containing a previously unissued tape of du Pré from 1965. With typical soul and penetration she plays Rubbra’s Soliloquy, a dark cloud of a landscape piece, performed with the Newbury String Players. Audio only this time.