OAE/Cummings/Hughes review: Purity and beauty reign in this Handel celebration
For those who know their Handel, the four late, great oratorios — Susanna, Solomon, Theodora and Jephtha — each contain at least one aria worthy of selection for that legendary desert island.
When the soprano Ruby Hughes heard from musicologist David Vickers that all four were written for the same singer, Giulia Frasi, Handel’s last prima donna, the idea for a concert programme and CD was born.
Hughes has always had a voice of crystalline beauty, but recently it has developed an extra velvety richness with no loss of purity. Crystal Streams (Susanna) suited her to a tee, while in Will the Sun Forget to Streak (Solomon), the Queen of Sheba’s rapt response to the glories of Jerusalem, guided tour, she explored a darker tonal quality.
With Darkness Deep, sung by the Christian martyr Theodora, condemned to death and worse, is another of Handel’s most moving arias, here delivered with true pathos, the voice brightening for the uplifting sequel, O that I on Wings Could Rise. For the contrasted sections of Farewell, Ye Limpid Springs (Jephtha) Hughes similarly deployed varied tonal colours.
Under Laurence Cummings, the OAE, making its debut at the London Handel Festival, occasionally reverted to the perfunctory default style of British period-instrument ensembles.
But aided by Katharina Spreckelsen’s wonderfully expressive oboe playing, they raised their game to the level of Hughes’s in several of her arias.
Festival ends April 16
