THE BIRTHDAY BOYS: BACH, HANDEL, SCARLATTI AT 301

The big Bach choral release we waited for in vain during the celebratory 300th birthday year in 1985 has appeared not long after the composer’s 301st birthday: the Mass in B minor from conductor John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir and period-instrument English Bach Soloists (Deutsche Grammophon Archiv 415 514, two records, LP or CD).

The clean lines and high-energy level characteristic of the interpretations of this most unpedantic of scholar-conductors are present in every measure of this grand and vivacious reading of one of the sublime masterpieces in all of music.

Note, however, that Gardiner’s compromises with “authentic” Baroque style extend to using adult, female sopranos rather than prepubescent boys, a welcome decision under any circumstances, sheer delight when they are the sweet, near-vibratoless voices of Nancy Argenta and Patrizia Kwella.

Soprano Emma Kirkby, the leading light among a new breed of singers suited by temperament, education and vocal attributes to give stylistically convincing renderings of Baroque repertory, is heard in the company of another superior British period ensemble, the trio known simply as London Baroque: violinist Ingrid Seifert, cellist Charles Medlam and harpsichordist-organist John Toll. Their program is chiefly devoted to the nine “German” arias of Handel, who continues to fare well on recordings a year after his 300th birthday (Angel DFO-38265, LP only).

Kirkby’s pure, whitish instrument and pointed enunciation are expertly employed in what are, in fact, not extracts from larger works, but self-contained, accompanied songs set to folksy texts dealing with the earthly pleasures with which true believers are rewarded. Religious music, to be sure, but for performance in the home rather than in the church.

In a recital devoted to actual arias--from operas, cantatas and oratorios of Handel and Bach (Delos 3026, CD only)--Arleen Auger proves to be a model Handel soprano of a different sort, with a richer, more womanly, more “modern” voice than Kirkby’s, but still sufficiently light and maneuverable to do justice to this material.

Auger’s interpretive approach mediates successfully between period cool and operatic warmth in a gorgeous half-hour of unhackneyed arias from Handel’s “Giulio Cesare,” “Rinaldo,” “Atalanta” and “Alexander’s Feast.” But one must question the need for most of the program’s remaining 40 minutes, a wasteful calling-card showcase--as if this superbly accomplished artist were auditioning for a job--of hyperfamiliar excerpts from the likes of “Messiah” and Bach’s “St. Matthew” Passion.

The accompaniments are by New York’s Mostly Mozart Orchestra under Gerard Schwarz’s brusquely efficient direction.

That the use of period instruments doesn’t guarantee musical quality is convincingly illustrated in a new recording of Handel’s marvelous pastoral ode after Milton, “L’Allegro, il penseroso ed il moderato” (Arabesque 6554, two records, LP only).

Martin Pearlman, who conducts the instrumentalists and choristers of Boston’s Banchetto Musicale, would seem to subscribe to the long-ago discredited belief that Baroque music must chug along with choo-choo train rhythmic regularity to be authentic. His Handel thus emerges with a striking resemblance to Vivaldi at his least engaging.

Pearlman’s orchestra is competent, his chorus precise and appropriately small. Amid a group of mediocre vocal soloists, one shines: soprano Nancy Armstrong, a chirping, trilling, infinitely agile and altogether beguiling singer one is eager to hear in more worthy company.

Handel’s affecting and festive oratorio “Samson” as recorded in 1980 by Erato/RCA (STU 71240, four records, LP only) and only now being released in this country, is no more than marginally stronger than the only competing edition, Karl Richter’s on Deutsche Grammophon.

For Erato, Raymond Leppard leads the modern instruments of the English Chamber Orchestra and the London Voices chorus with rather too much lushness and too little incisiveness. And Robert Tear, as the titular hero/victim (Samson is already blind at the start of the oratorio), cannot compensate with intelligence and expert enunciation for frequently strangulated tones and a dynamic range that runs the unpleasant gamut from loud to too loud.

But there are two vocal contributions of such solid accomplishment as to make the failings of this production almost worth enduring: those of mezzo-soprano Janet Baker, as a touchingly humane, penitent Dalila, and of baritone John Shirley-Quirk, a paragon of sorrowful dignity and vocal solidity as Manoa, Samson’s father.

An unqualified triumph, on the other hand, is a set of the dozen Organ Concertos of Handel’s Opus 4 and Opus 7 (Erato/RCA 75223, LP, and ECD 88136, CD, three records each). Ton Koopman is the soloist as well as director of the period-instrument Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. In both capacities, he is an irresistibly stimulating performer, embellishing the solo part with gleeful abandon and appositeness while drawing execution of pinpoint precision and optimum clarity from his superb orchestra.

Domenico Scarlatti, the neglected 300th-birthday boy of 1985, is also represented among recent 1986 releases with a recording of his atypically somber, dramatic “Stabat Mater” for 10 solo voices and continuo as well as the brief, strikingly chromatic “Salve Regina” for two solo voices and organ. Equally exotic here, surprisingly, is a group of Scarlatti keyboard sonatas--played not, as one would expect, on the harpsichord but on a gently wheezy Baroque organ, for which some of them were clearly scored and on which all of them sound utterly convincing.

The stylish and polished, if rather dour, performances are led and played by conductor-organist Francis Greer. The celestially pure voices belong to the boys and men of the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford (Hyperion 66182, LP or CD).