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Handel | The Triumph of Time and Truth, HWV71 (1757) |
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Mhairi Lawson | soprano |
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Katy Crompton | soprano |
Alex Chance | countertenor |
Nick Pritchard | tenor |
Matthew Brook | bass |
Edward Higginbottom | conductor |
Oxford Voices | |
Instruments of Time & Truth |
Instruments of Time and Truth are joined by Oxford Voices and a stellar line-up of soloists for this rare performance of Handel’s eponymous oratorio, both his first and last.
Whether its theme – the need to invest in a higher good rather than in transient beauty – may have resonated with the composer in his final years, we don’t know. What we do know is that the work exudes Handel’s amazing fluency as a young composer, and his ability to recast his music in the light of a lifetime’s experience.
In many ways this oratorio is Handel’s alpha and omega: it first saw the light of day at the very beginning of his career, in Rome in 1708, as Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno. Then, following another Italian version in 1737, towards the end of his life, Handel supervised the expanded 1757 version, now in English, transforming a chamber piece into a fully formed oratorio, boasting chorus and brass, the essential circumstantial trappings of the genre for an English public, then as now.