St-Martin-in-the-Fields; Royal Festival Hall; Coliseum, London
The Monteverdi Choir dazzles in Handel’s pestilential thriller; one organ and 100 speakers pack quite a punch; and Jennifer Johnston saves the day in fiery Bartók
Peter Whelan is a common name among musicians. There’s one who is a leading bassoonist, both as soloist and as orchestral principal. Another is a harpsichordist who digs up neglected works, particularly from 18th-century Dublin and Edinburgh, and reconstructs them for performance and recording. Then there’s Peter Whelan, artistic director of the Irish Baroque Orchestra, conductor of the Irish National Opera and a founder of the period-instrument Ensemble Marsyas. Versatile is an inadequate description for this multitalented, Irish-born musician who is, in each of these cases, all the same person.
Whelan is now mid-European tour, conducting Handel’s Israel in Egypt, with the Monteverdi Choir, 60 this year, and the English Baroque Soloists (in which, no surprise, he has played bassoon). Last week they were in London, at St Martin-in-the-Fields. This vivid, double-choir choral work, premiered in 1739, could hardly have sounded more exhilarating. The biblical epic shows Handel borrowing from himself as well as other composers, and at his most inventive, with musical depictions of plagues of flies, lice and locusts; frogs, hailstones, darkness and, after bloodshed, redemption.
