George Frideric Handel
S A U L
English Oratorio in three acts,
performed according to the traditions of the time
with
Stephen Varcoe - Bass (Saul)
Nancy Argenta - Soprano (Michal)
Laurie Reviol - Soprano (Merab)
Michael Chance - Alto, Countertenor (David)
Mark Le Brocq - Tenor (Jonathan)
Michael Berner - Tenor (Abner, High Priest, Witch Of Endor, Amalekite)
Steffen Balbach - Bass (Samuel, Doeg)
Hanoverian Court Orchestra (on period instruments)
Maulbronn Chamber Choir
Conductor: Jürgen Budday
A concert hosted by Klosterkonzerte Maulbronn
at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Maulbronn Monastery,
September 28th & 29th, 2002.
Released & created by Andreas Otto Grimminger & Josef-Stefan Kindler
in cooperation with Jürgen Budday.
Sound & Recording Engineer: Andreas Otto Grimminger
Mastering: Andreas Otto Grimminger & Josef-Stefan Kindler
Photography: Josef-Stefan Kindler
Artwork & Coverdesign: Josef-Stefan Kindler
2 CD-Box, DDD, Total Playing Time: 02:37:17
KuK 83, ISBN 978-3-930643-83-7, EAN 42 6000591 019 3, EUR 33,-
Copyright by K&K Verlagsanstalt anno 2002.
The libretto of the concert
with lyrics and detailed informations
Performance & Opus
This recording is part of a cycle of old testament oratorios by G. F. Handel and is one of the many concerts performed at Maulbronn monastery over the past years. The series combines authentically performed baroque oratorios with the optimal acoustics and atmosphere of this unique monastic church. This ideal location demands the transparency of playing and the interpretive unveiling of the rhetoric intimations of the composition, which is especially aided by the historically authentic performance. The music is exclusively performed on reconstructed historical instruments, which are tuned to the pitch customary in the composers lifetime (a = c. 415 Hz).
Artists
Nancy Argenta - Soprano
The Canadian singer counts for many as "the supreme Handel soprano of our age". She started her musical studies in British Columbia where she graduated in 1980 from the University of Western Ontario. Her teachers included Sir Peter Pears, Gérard Souzay and Vera Rozsa with whom she occasionally still works. Her repertoire stretches from the 17th century to today and includes songs, oratorios and Opera. She is a frequent guest of many international festivals such as those in Aix-en-Provence, Aldeburgh, Bath, Berlin, Göttingen, New York and Vienna.
Laurie Reviol - Sopran
The Canadian born soprano studied piano and voice in Toronto. She also completed an artistic study in the field of historic performance practices at the College of Performing Arts in Frankfurt. She is a member of the Ensemble Leonarda. Opera engagements have taken her to Frankfurt, Bayreuth, Schwerin and Quedlinburg and also to Utrecht (Festival Oude Musziek), Vienna and to America (Boston Early Music Festival). She has worked with, among others, Erin Headley, Michael Schneider, Stephen Stubbs und Paul O'Dette. Laurie Reviol is also a passionate jazz singer.
Michael Chance - Countertenor (Daniel)
Michael Chance's carrier began, as did so many of his colleagues, in King's College, Cambridge, as countertenor in England's conceivably most famous choir. Today he is one of the worlds most sought after countertenors, not only for opera - he sang, for example, the military governor in the world première of Judith Weir’s “A Night at the Chinese Opera” - but also for oratorios and songs. He is a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music, London. He performs often in Paris, Amsterdam, Stuttgart and Berlin and has also been in America, Japan and Australia many times. Frieder Bernius, Frans Brüggen, John Eliot Gardiner and Trevor Pinnock are just some of the conductors that he works with regularly. A specialty of Michael Chance's is the song evenings he gives with the Gamben-Consort Fretwork, Nigel North and, more recently, Roger Vignoles, in which he sings pieces for voice and lute from the English Renaissance and also, frequently, works from contemporary, mostly English composers.
Mark Le Brocq - Tenor (Belshazzar, Arioch)
Mark Le Brocq held a choral scholarship at St Catherine's College, Cambridge where he read English. He won several prizes and awards at the Royal Academy of Music including the Blyth Buesset Opera Prize, the Royal Academy of Music Club Prize and the Worshipful Company of Musicians' Medal. He was formerly a company principal with the English National Opera. Over the years, the tenor has worked together with many important directors, including David Alden, David Poutney, Jonathan Miller, Niklaus Lehnhoff, Graham Vick and David Freeman. He performed regularly with the Gabrieli Consort under Paul McCreesh. He sang with Monserat Caballé and Dennis O'Neill in Verdi Opera Galas in Bath, the Mozart and the Verdi Requiems in the Barbican Centre, London and the Mozart Requiem with The English Concert under Trevor Pinnock in Salzburg.
Stephen Varcoe ~ Bass
The English bass-baritone, Stephen (Chistopher) Varcoe, studied at Cambridge, and during his school years there he sang in the King’s College Choir. In 1977 he won a scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation. Stephen Varcoe has established a reputation as one of Britain's most versatile baritones, and has sung in opera, concerts and recitals covering a wide range of repertoire in Europe, the USA and the Far East. He is often to be heard performing Bach Cantatas, Songs from Schubert, and Victorian Ballads. His musical repertoire is quite extensive and reaches into modern music. An area of emphasis, however, is compositions from the time of Bach and Händel. Stephen has always been fascinated by the relationship between words and music, and the role of the singer in communicating meaning to an audience and is currently writing a book on singing in English. He is in constant demand for Master Classes as a specialist in German lieder and English songs, having taught at many UK Universities and Colleges. Stephen Varcoe's operatic appearances include Haydn's L'Infedelta Delusa in Antwerp, Debussy's Fall of The House of Usher in Lisbon and London, John Tavener's opera Mary Of Egypt for the Aldeburgh Festival and Plutone in Peri's Euridice for the Drottningholm Festival, Sweden. His repertoire also includes Death in Holst's Savitr, Demetrius in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Salieri in Rimsky Korsakov's Mozart & Salieri.
Stephen Varcoe has appeared with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the St Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, New Zealand Chamber Orchestra, the Hanover Band, at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Portugal, at the National Arts Centre Orchestra, Ottawa, with the King’s Consort, at the Festival Cervantino in Mexico, and with conductors Frans Brüggen, Daniel, John Eliot Gardiner, Richard Hickox, Lindberg, Charles Mackerras, Malgoire, Minkowski, Östman, Trevor Pinnock, Joshua Rifkin, Roszdevensky and Tortelier. Recent engagements have included Goehr's Sonata About Jerusalem with Knussen and the Schoenberg Ensemble, Bach's St Matthew Passion (BWV 244) with Trevor Pinnock in Ottawa, Bach Cantatas with the Bach Sonnerie at the Spitalfields Festival, Vaughan-Williams' Sir John In Love with Richard Hickox and the Northern Sinfonia, Webern Cantata II with Simon Joly and The BBC Symphony Orchestra, Schubert's Mass in E flat with Roger Norrington and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Messiah with Steuart Bedford the City of London Sinfonia.
Stephen Varcoe appears regularly in recital in England and abroad and is heard frequently in recital with the Songmakers' Almanac and on BBC Radio 3. Recent recital work has included a programme of Finzi and Somervell with Iain Burnside, Schubert's Winterreise with Eugene Asti, Brahms, Schumann and Wolf at the Wigmore Hall with Graham Johnson, Grainger with Penelope Thwaites for BBC Radio 3 and Schubert and with Graham Johnson at the Bury St Edmund's Festival.
Stephen Varcoe has made over 100 recordings including Purcell, Händel and Bach with Pinnock, John Eliot Gardiner, Richard Hickox and Sigiswald Kuijken, Mozart with Neville Marriner, Fauré with Rutter, Holst with Richard Hickox, Richard Strauss with Roger Norrington, recitals of Finzi and Parry with Clifford Benson and French songs with Graham Johnson, with whom he recorded Volume 2 in the Hyperion Schubert edition. He has also recorded Haydn and Grainger for Chandos with Richard Hickox and the City of London Sinfonia, Schoenberg with Robert Craft and The 20th Century Classics Ensemble and Stravinsky with Robert Craft and The Orchestra of St. Luke's.
Steffen Balbach - Bass
studied church music at the College of Church Music, Esslingen. He was full time cantor of the ev. Christuskirche in Donaueschingen. He completed his vocal studies at the Freiburg Conservatory with the highest possible point count. Since then, he has sung the bass and baritone parts of countless oratorios, cantatas and masses. In 2001 he reached the final round of the renowned international vocal competition Belvedere in Vienna. Stefan Balbach works with the choir of Radio Bavaria and the Gewandhaus-Kammerchor, Leipzig. He has been a member of the National Opera, Stuttgart since 2002.
Hanoverian Court Orchestra (Hannoversche Hofkapelle)
The Hanoverian Court Orchestra maintains the tradition of the historic court orchestras and performs with both chamber and symphonic instrumentation. The fact that its members also play in other European Baroque formations, helps forge the sound of the ensemble. The repertoire of the Hanoverian Court Orchestra not only incorporates Baroque music in all its forms, but also Romantic pieces and Classical works, especially Mozart's operas and the Romantic genre. The continual involvement with the music of the 17th and 18th century has allowed each of the Court Orchestra’s musicians to become a master of his instrument. From this emerges the expressive and elegant playing that allows the Hanoverian Court Orchestra to maintain its prominent position.
Maulbronn Chamber Choir
The Maulbronn Chamber Choir was founded by its director, Jürgen Budday, in 1983 and is one of the top choirs in Germany today. In addition to learning a baroque oratorio, the ensemble compiles a sacred and secular a-cappella programme every year, its focal point being 19th and 20th century literature. First prize at the Baden Württemberg Choir Competition in 1989 and 1997, second prize at the Third German Choir Competition in Stuttgart in 1990, and a victory at the Fifth German Choir Competition in Regensburg in 1998 document the chamber choir's extraordinary musical standard. The Maulbronn Chamber Choir has received, among others, invitations to the Ettlingen Palace Festival, the chamber music series of the Dresden Philharmonic, the cloister concerts at the Walkenried convent, the First International Festival of Sacred Music in Rottenburg, and the European Music Festival in Passau. The choir has also made a name for itself internationally. The 1983 debut tour through the USA with concerts in, among others, New York and Indianapolis, and the participation in the Festival of Music in New Harmony, Indiana, as well as concert tours through numerous European countries, Israel, Argentina (1993 and 1997), South Africa, and Namibia (2001) were all greeted with similar enthusiasm by the public and critics alike. The third tour through South America followed in autumn 2003 with concerts in Argentina and Uruguay.
Jürgen Budday (Conductor)
Jürgen Budday is director of church music and artistic director of the concert series at the monastery of Maulbronn, of the cantor choir and of the Maulbronn Chamber Choir. He studied music education, church music and musicology at the Academy of Music in Stuttgart and, since 1979, has taught at the Evangelic Theology Seminar in Maulbronn. For his teaching and artistic activity, he has received many awards, including the Bundesverdienstkreuz am Bande (German Cross of Merit) and the Bruno-Frey Prize from the State Academy, Ochsenhausen. Since 2002, Jürgen Budday has also held the chair of the choral committee of the German Music Council. Several concert recordings have been made under his artistic direction. They have often received international recognition and high praise from critics. These have included the Handel oratorios Jephtha, Samson, Judas Maccabaeus and Saul with Emma Kirkby, Michael Chance, Nancy Argenta and Stephen Varcoe.
The Maulbronn Monastery CD Series
Publishing culture in its authentic form entails for us capturing and recording for posterity outstanding performances and concerts. The performers, audience, opus and room enter into an intimate dialogue that in its form and expression, its atmosphere, is unique and unrepeatable. It is our aim, the philosophy of our house, to enable the listener to acutely experience every facet of this symbiosis, the intensity of the performance. The results are unparalleled interpretations of musical and literary works, simply - audiophile snapshots of permanent value.
The concerts in Maulbronn monastery, which we document with this edition, supply, the ideal conditions for our aspirations. It is, above all, the atmosphere of the romantic, candle-lit arches, the magic of the monastery in its unadulterated sublime presence and tranquillity that impresses itself upon the performers and audience of these concerts. Renowned soloists and ensembles from the international arena repeatedly welcome the opportunity to appear here - enjoying the unparalleled acoustic and architectural beauty of this World Heritage Site (monastery church, cloister gardens, lay refectory, etc.), providing exquisite performances of secular and sacred music.
Under the patronage of the Evangelical Seminar, the Maulbronn Monastery Cloister Concerts were instigated in 1968 with an abundance of musical enthusiasm and voluntary leadership. Within the hallowed walls of the classical grammar and boarding school, existent for more than 450 years, some of society's great thinkers, poets and humanists, such as Kepler, Hölderlin, Herwegh and Hesse received their first impressions.
The youthful elan, the constructive participation of the pupils, continuing the tradition of their great predecessors, constructs an enlightened climate in which artistic ambitions can especially thrive. Twenty-five concerts take place between May and September. Their success can be largely attributed to the many voluntary helpers from near and far. There is a break for winter.
Flourishing culture in a living monument, created for the delight of the live audience and, last but not least, you the listener, are the ideals we document with this series.
Jürgen Budday, Andreas Otto Grimminger & Josef-Stefan Kindler