RECORDINGS WRAP UP THE HANDEL YEAR

Los Angeles was a non-contender in paying homage to George Frideric Handel during the tercentenary of his birth.

We heard none of the less-familiar oratorios. We had no professional, perhaps not even any amateur, staging of a Handel opera in Los Angeles in 1985, whereas the metropolises of Purchase, N.Y., and College Park, Md., staged Handel productions that were, according to reliable reports, among the finest--and most inventive--to be found anywhere in the world.

So, L.A.-based Handelians had to seek solace in recordings. And even there, the big, gap-filling event of the Handel Tercentenary eluded us (and the rest of the world) until its closing weeks.

The 11th-hour blessing came in the form of the first stylistically valid recording (Philips 412 612, three standard discs, two compact discs) of the splendid oratorio “Solomon,” an exemplar of the musical grandeur of the composer’s last years.

The performers in this recording are the English Baroque Soloists, playing on period instruments, and the Monteverdi Choir under the astute and lively direction of John Eliot Gardiner. The libretto of “Solomon,” by a writer whose identity remains a mystery, takes the form of a tribute to the wisdom and heroism of Handel’s patron, George II, and a paean to wealthy, omnipotent Georgian England. But, as set by Handel, it also becomes a profoundly human document, filled with deft characterizations.

Handel wrote all the principal parts, including the title role, for women and on Philips his instructions have been faithfully observed. In the case of Solomon himself, this may take some getting used to, previous editions having cast a dramatically more convincing tenor or bass in the part. But in so doing, editors played havoc with Handel’s key relationships and harmonies.

Gardiner’s Solomon is the lovely young English mezzo-soprano Carolyn Watkinson, who portrays the monarch to as credible a degree as necessary, Solomon after all being not a realistic role, but rather the not-too-close--for fear of committing lese majeste-- symbolic representation of the British monarch.

Handel’s stunning gifts of musical characterization are brought to bear in Act II, which celebrates the wisdom of Solomon. Suddenly, with the entry of the two harlots, suing for possession of the infant each claims to be hers, the dignified oratorio becomes a piece of lively theater: Each of the women, the one tenderly solicitous (soprano Jean Rogers), the other scheming and hypocritical (mezzo Della Jones), defined with cunning musical strokes and theatrical acumen that would do honor to a Mozart or a Verdi.

Solomon’s passionate, adoring Queen (soprano Nancy Argenta) is likewise a character of flesh and blood, whereas the Queen of Sheba (soprano Barbara Hendricks), who represents an admiring world paying tribute to the wealth and power of Solomon/George II rather than a royal dalliance, returns us to the symbolic world of Act I and the pomp of the Georgian court.

Highly recommended as well is a handsome-sounding re-release of the dozen-year-old recording of the 1735 oratorio “Saul” in which Sir Charles Mackerras conducts the modern-instruments English Chamber Orchestra and the Leeds Festival Chorus (Deutsche Grammophon 413 910, three standard discs). To anyone at all interested in 18th-Century musico-dramatic style, the mental deterioration of the Saul of Charles Jennens’ libretto and Handel’s score will be no less harrowing than that of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov.

Indeed, an English-speaking Boris of the highest attainment is what the role requires. The present Saul, bass Donald McIntyre, is hardly a vocal paragon, but he does make us sympathetic witnesses to the king’s jealous rages, his catastrophic self-deception: a powerful, if incomplete, picture of a Lear-like figure whose plight unfolds in a chain of strikingly dramatic recitatives.

The center-stage dominance of Saul is given a powerful, if quite likely unintentional, assist by the librettist, who contrasts the gnarled figure of the old king with the most wimpy-sweet David in all of literature, fittingly sung here by James Bowman. There are potent characterizations too of Saul’s daughters, the noble Michal and the haughty Merab, sung respectively (and superbly) by sopranos Sheila Armstrong and Margaret Price, in a foreshadowing of the “Solomon” harlots.

While there is certainly room for a period style recording of “Saul,” this one is hugely persuasive on its own terms, expertly setting forth all the elements of Handel’s extraordinary structure: its soul-baring recitatives, florid yet dramatically pertinent arias, festive choruses and brilliant orchestral interludes.

One of the more eagerly anticipated releases of the Handel year is the set documenting Sir Colin Davis’s up-to-the-moment thoughts on “Messiah” (Philips 412 538, three standard or compact discs). The Davis-London Symphony recording of 20 years ago was a revelation to many listeners for its lack of Victorian starchiness: its crisp rhythms, its chamber-music proportions and the free ornamentation employed by the vocal soloists.

Davis II exhibits conducting for the most part as lively and engaging as before, with more instrumental ornamentation in evidence as well.

But while the contributions of soprano Margaret Price and tenor Stuart Burrows are on the mark vocally and stylistically, the two remaining soloists might have wandered in from an alien culture, if not a distant planet: mezzo Hanna Schwarz is thick-toned and often under the note, while bass Simon Estes is too realistic for comfort when he “Shakes the heav’ns and the earth” and finds the runs of “Why do the nations” well beyond his capabilities.

Ornamentation of the vocal line has, seemingly, been left to individual choice, with only soprano Price indicating any desire to exercise her prerogative in this matter. The Bavarian Radio Orchestra and Chorus perform their duties well enough, the latter in clearly enunciated, lightly accented English. But one misses the typically sweet, vibratoless sound of British choral sopranos.

There is even less to be said for the Maryland Handel Festival production of “Messiah,” a misbegotten attempt at re-creating the Westminster Abbey presentation of 1787, with its mammoth choral and orchestral forces (Pro Arte 232, two standard or compact discs). Antal Dorati may not be a Baroque stylist, but the notion of style is secondary here to organizing the sprawl into some form of coherency, in which he succeeds reasonably well.

The large period instrument orchestra, the Smithsonian Concerto Grosso, plays expertly, but the combined choruses of the University of Maryland and Washington Cathedral project a crude, often mushy sound.

The international solo quartet comprises soprano Edith Mathis, tremulous and vague of pitch, sounding in “Rejoice greatly” as if someone had a knife at her throat; James Bowman, who sings the alto solos weakly; Claes H. Ahnsjo, vocally adequate if linguistically insecure in the tenor solos; and baritone Tom Krause, bringing welcome vocal security and a sense of style to the bass solos.

The Handel operas’ lack of onstage success during the past two hundred years has been an unfortunate fact of musical history. Yet the modernized productions of Peter Sellars and a handful of other forward-looking directors have shown that the music is hardly ever at fault--given some trimming.

This fails to explain why recorded versions of the operas, which obviate staging problems, are such rarities. Two versions of “Giulio Cesare,” arguably the greatest of his 40-odd operas, are the sum total of recent activity in that particular area of Handeliana: the English National Opera’s drastically cut English-language production (Angel DSC-3974, three standard discs) conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras; and a reissue, sung in the original Italian, of a 1970 recording led by Karl Richter (Deutsche Grammophon 413 897, four standard discs), which while still well short of completeness, is more generous than Angel’s.

On Angel, Caesar (originally written for a mezzo castrato) is sung by Dame Janet Baker, in somewhat simplified form to suit her current vocal estate. But while some of the old ease may be lacking, Baker’s dramatic instincts, her attention to textual projection as inseparable from musical values, is as strongly evidenced as ever.

The Cleopatra is soprano Valerie Masterson, sweetly, subtly seductive in the composer’s operatic masterstroke, the allegorical scene in which the Queen of the Nile tempts Caesar with the ravishing aria “V’adoro pupille.” There is strong, dramatic vocalism from Sarah Walker as Cornelia and Della Jones as Sextus, but countertenor James Bowman renders Ptolemy a caricature drag nasty. Mackerras’s conducting is surprisingly unincisive throughout and he is unconcerned with maintaining consistency in even that most basically enhancing of vocal ornaments, the cadential trill.

Karl Richter’s conducting, on the other hand, is hard and too often square. The edition he uses casts a baritone, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, in the title role, and a mezzo, Tatiana Troyanos, as Cleopatra, falsifying Handel’s carefullywrought key relationships. Yet so dynamic and technically confident is Fischer-Dieskau’s performance, so beautifully intoned and dramatically convincing Troyanos’s, so intense their interaction that one succumbs to them and what’s left of Handel while condemning the bowdlerization.

Finally, a budget-priced reissue (London Jubilee 414 310, two standard discs) of Handel’s early masque “Acis and Galatea” in the legendary 1960 recording with Joan Sutherland and Peter Pears. The agile Sutherland soprano is here in purest estate, the trills thrillingly clean, the vocal “droop” of later, Richard Bonynge-dominated productions nonexistent under the baton of Sir Adrian Boult.

In Pears’ eloquent Acis there is hardly a trace of the strain and tendency to sing around the notes encouraged if not demanded by the music of Benjamin Britten. And who can resist bass Owen Brannigan, unable to decide whether he is the monster Polyphemus or Gilbert & Sullivan’s Dick Deadeye.

In all, a treasurable performance, with infinitely more charm and naturalness than any of its musicologically more correct successors.

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