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Handel: Acis and Galatea
arr. by Felix Mendelssohn

Jeni Bern (Galatea), Benjamin Hulett (Acis),
Nathan Vale (Damon) & Brindley Sherratt (Polyphemus)
Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford & Oxford Philomusica/Stephen Darlington
Recorded at St Michael's & All Angels, Oxford February 2012

NIMBUS NI 6201

This new HIP recording of Acis and Galatea (1829) is something of a guilty pleasure - and a sheer delight !

Handel conducted the original in the Great Hall in Christ Church in 1743, and the Mendelssohn score is in the Bodleian Library.

Mendelssohn stamped his own identity onto the original after keyboard continuo had been generally abandoned, strengthening the strings and adding wind and brass.

It is all achieved convincingly by these Oxford forces.

Acis & Galatea is imprinted firmly on my musical memory since the 1960s, when my then small son sang the part of Damon in Eltham, leading to his being catapulted into fame by Joan Sutherland

Recommended stongly as a window into opera in the mid-1800s.

Peter Grahame Woolf