Lesley-Jane Rogers soprano
John Turner recorder
Jonathan Price cello
Jonathan Bielby harpsichord
Heritage HTGCD 118
The connection between Handel and British football may not be immediately apparent. Singing goes on at football matches, but rarely of the Handelian kind. The composer Michael Nyman is a fervent supporter of Queen’s Park Rangers, and has written football-themed works; not one, though, that pays homage to Handel.
The person who definitely unites Handel with football is the late and distinguished music scholar Percy Young (1912-2004), who wrote biographies of Handel among many others, served as Vice-President of the Handel Society, and was much associated with the Händel-Haus in Halle, the house where Handel was born. Young also wrote 12 books about football. Hence, by a roundabout route, Hommage, which captures a concert in 2006 held in the Händel-Haus itself to celebrate Young’s life, work and enthusiasms, was sponsored by Britain’s Professsional Footballers’ Association.
British artists pungently give forth with a Handel cantata (Nel dolce del’oblio), Purcell selections, a delightful short cantata by Handel’s fellow émigré Johann Pepusch, and, to our purpose, a newly commissioned homage to Handel by Robin Walker, the most unfairly neglected and emotionally and spiritually nourishing of all British composers; with other homages to Handel and Purcell, more bristling in tone, by the German composer Ruth Zechlin.
Walker’s piece is an 11-minute cantata, Handel to his Soul, to a text by the composer himself. As with so many Walker pieces, its emotional resonance is way bigger than the work’s modest dimensions suggest, a resonance amplified by the marvellously committed and full-voiced signing of Lesley-Jane Rogers, who’s on blazing good form throughout the whole album. Walker’s text imagines a dialogue between the troubled Handel and his comforting Soul, with an unsettling interjection from the goddess Proserpina. Don’t worry, everything ends happily.
The accompanying instruments are recorder (John Turner) and harpsichord (Jonathan Bielby). Both players deftly interject and entwine themselves in and around the solo line: this is intimate music-making of a high order. Walker as usual writes from the heart rather than the head, following instinct, not set rules; and given Handel’s long years in England, the echoes of modal folk song that drift in are not only beautiful but geographically appropriate. It is a hauntingly moving work, and we’re so lucky to have this performance rescued from the archive and put out into the wider world.
Pleasures continues with Pepusch’s catchy little cantata, When Love’s Soft Passion, and Rogers’ other vocal items, sung with a ringing passion so strong that it knocked me sideways. Do seek out this quirky and distinguished album, which decisively proves that the beautiful game’s relationship with music doesn’t end with football chants belted out on and off the pitch.
Review by Geoff Brown