Christopher Purves, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen - George Frideric Handel: Finest Arias for Base Voice (2013)

Basses in the 18th century rarely enjoyed star billing. Public adulation, with fees to match, was usually reserved for temperamental sopranos and castratos. One of Handel’s basses, Gustavus Waltz, may even have served a spell as the composer’s cook. Yet, as this enterprising recital reveals, Handel wrote superb, varied music for several remarkable basses over his 50-year career, from the Neapolitan priest Antonio Manna, probable creator of Polifemo in the Italian serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, to the anglicised German Henry Reinhold, his oratorio bass of choice from the late 1730s. In between, during his hectic years as opera composer-cum-director, Handel engaged two celebrated Italians: Giuseppe Maria Boschi, a baritone rather than bass who specialised in raging tyrants, and Antonio Montagnana, praised by the music historian Charles Burney for his ‘depth, power and mellowness, and peculiar accuracy of intonation in hitting distant intervals’.

No Handel aria trades in ‘distant intervals’ more spectacularly than Polifemo’s ‘Fra l’ombre e gl’orrori’, in which the oversexed cyclops compares himself to, of all things, a bemused butterfly. Handel later recycled this, in a slightly simplified version, for Montagnana in Sosarme. Unfazed, Christopher Purves sings the original, stunningly, expanding its two-and-a-half octave compass (high tenor A to subterranean bass D) by inserting a fathomless low B flat in the da capo. But the result is no mere circus trick. Possessing in effect two voices in one – a ringing, incisive high baritone with a sonorous bass extension – Purves veils his tone to convey bemusement, even pathos.

Purves’s flair for specific characterisation enlivens every number on the disc. Egged on by Arcangelo’s splenetic strings, he works himself into a rage worthy of Boschi in an aria from Riccardo Primo. Coloratura, here and elsewhere, is always precisely focused, wide leaps cleanly negotiated at speed. In ‘O ruddier than the cherry’ he delightfully suggests destructive lust barely contained beneath the would-be ingratiating veneer. Elsewhere Purves relishes the tortuous chromaticism of Lucifer’s ‘Caddi, è ver’ (La Resurrezione) and the genial swing of the ‘hunting’ aria from L’Allegro, abetted by Roger Montgomery’s rollicking horn obbligato. He can be dulcet, too, whether in Claudius’s attempted seduction of Poppea in Agrippina or the arias for two chastened fathers, Abinoam (Deborah) and Gobrias (Belshazzar), the latter growing more intense and troubled as it proceeds. Trumpet and voice vie thrillingly in the perennial bass favourite, ‘Revenge, Timotheus cries’, while in the final number, Somnus’s ‘Leave me, loathsome light’, Purves evokes drowsiness and lassitude without recourse to a white, ‘yawned’ tone. Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo savour the rich string textures here, typical of their feeling for colour throughout a recital that pays eloquent tribute to Handel’s boundless invention in composing for bass voice: a counter, as David Vickers suggests in his informative note, to the clichéd notion that his bass arias are all undifferentiated bluster.

Review by Richard Wigmore, Gramophone

There's no shortage of Handel aria recitals these days, especially in Britain, but this one by bass baritone Christopher Purves stands out from the crowd in several respects. First of all, it is rare in collecting arias for bass voice, which was, in Handel's time as it was later on, generally associated with a few fixed and generally negative character types (tyrants, rogues, repressive patriarchs). Second, it's a very pleasantly varied collection of tunes, including displays of brilliant passagework, out-of-the-norm writing in service of characterization (Fra l'ombre e gl'orrori, from Aci, Galatea e Polifemo, track 4), and high climactic drama (the big, three-part Revenge, Timotheus cries, from Alexander's Feast, track 19, is a familiar example). Finally, Purves unearths some rarely heard pieces and programs them intelligently. When did anyone last year anything from Muzio Scevola, or Riccardo Primo, rè d'Inghilterra, which must have pleased London audiences in 1727 despite its Italian-language text. Purves does not have the biggest voice in the bass baritone universe, and there could be a bit more sound in the very low notes. But the dimensions of the music are right for the period. He's pleasingly accurate in the passagework, and he's a real actor who makes these potentially stilted characters come alive. Listeners will want to hear Purves in a small production of one of these operas after hearing this album, preferably accompanied by the strong historical-instrument group Arcangelo under Jonathan Cohen, as he is here.

Review by James Manheim, Allmusic.com

Exact Audio Copy V1.1 from 23. June 2015

EAC extraction logfile from 23. August 2015, 18:39

Christopher Purves, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen / Handel - Finest Arias for Base Voice

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foobar2000 1.2 / Dynamic Range Meter 1.1.1
log date: 2016-06-08 13:39:12

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Analyzed: Christopher Purves, Arcangelo, Jonathan Cohen / Handel - Finest Arias for Base Voice
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DR Peak RMS Duration Track
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DR12 -1.27 dB -16.47 dB 4:50 01-Rinaldo, HWV 7a - Sibilar gli angui d'Aletto
DR13 -1.70 dB -18.50 dB 1:21 02-Acis & Galatea, HWV 49a - I rage, I melt, I burn! -
DR14 -1.64 dB -19.51 dB 3:13 03-Acis & Galatea, HWV 49a - O ruddier than the cherry
DR12 -5.13 dB -22.14 dB 6:59 04-Aci, Galatea & Polifemo, HWV 72 - Fra l'ombre & gl'orrori
DR14 -6.74 dB -22.08 dB 0:12 05-L'Allegro, il Penseroso & il Moderato, HWV 55 - If I give thee honour due -
DR12 -1.47 dB -17.70 dB 2:34 06-L'Allegro, il Penseroso & il Moderato, HWV 55 - Mirth, admit me of thy crew
DR13 -1.68 dB -18.33 dB 1:09 07-La Resurrezione, HWV 47 - Qual'insolita luce -
DR14 -2.21 dB -18.91 dB 4:15 08-La Resurrezione, HWV 47 - Caddi, e ver
DR11 -6.40 dB -23.27 dB 2:30 09-Deborah, HWV 51 - Tears, such as tender fathers shed
DR13 -2.64 dB -20.49 dB 3:55 10-Belshazzar, HWV 61 - To pow'r immortal my first thanks are due
DR13 -4.21 dB -20.55 dB 1:11 11-Orlando, HWV 31 - Impari ognun da Orlando -
DR13 -2.14 dB -18.97 dB 4:35 12-Orlando, HWV 31 - Sorge infausta una procella
DR14 -1.25 dB -17.77 dB 3:56 13-Theodora, HWV 68 - Racks, gibbets, sword & fire
DR12 -3.07 dB -19.11 dB 3:24 14-Muzio Scevola, HWV 13 - Volate piщ dei venti
DR11 -6.16 dB -20.10 dB 1:45 15-Agrippina, HWV 6 - Vieni, o cara
DR13 -1.38 dB -16.91 dB 3:13 16-Riccardo Primo, Re d'Inghilterra, HWV 23 - Nel mondo & nell'abisso
DR14 -1.78 dB -19.39 dB 2:50 17-Apollo & Dafne, HWV 122 - Mie piante correte -
DR12 -4.26 dB -20.56 dB 7:27 18-Apollo & Dafne, HWV 122 - Cara pianta
DR13 -1.12 dB -17.84 dB 7:55 19-Alexander's Feast, HWV 75 - Revenge, Timotheus cries
DR11 -8.77 dB -23.69 dB 3:40 20-Semele, HWV 58 - Leave me, loathsome light
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Official DR value: DR13

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