Classical

The classical music of the week reviewed by MICHAEL DERVAN

Handel: La Resurrezione

Virgin Classics 6945670 (2 CDs) ****

This early Italian oratorio of 1708 finds the 23-year-old Handel at his dramatic best, and shows why he has become much more famous than the composers he had travelled to Italy to learn from. It sets off like a kind of firework, with a spirited sonata followed by a conflict between an Angel and Lucifer. The esprit of the writing of the Angel’s aria and the elan of Camilla Tilling’s triumphant delivery are one of the highlights in a work that simply fizzes with good things. Luca Pisaroni is a fine Lucifer, with Kate Royal a liquid- toned Maria Maddalena, Sonia Prina a strangely counter-tenorish Maria Cleofe, and Toby Spence a sturdy Giovanni Evangelista. Emmanuelle Haïm drives her period instruments musicians with fiery determination. www.emi classics.com

Magnificats in D by Mendelsshon and Bach

Yale Voxtet, Yale Schola Cantorum, Yale Collegium Players/Simon Carrington

Naxos 8.572161 ***

Mendelssohn's 1822 Magnificat in D is a hybrid that's both curious and impressive. The 13-year-old composer's models were the Magnificats of Johann Sebastian Bach and his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, and the teenager's work shows clear signs of its baroque and classical models, shot through with 19th-century influence. In its own derivative way it's even more impressive than the series of teenage string symphonies that are so popular with chamber orchestras. Simon Carrington (ex King's Singers) and his student forces from Yale University also offer fresh and unaffected performances of Bach's great Magnificat , and two shorter pieces by Mendelssohn: a movement from the G minor String Symphony, and a later Ave Maria. www.naxosdirect.ie

Bach + Zimmermann Skempton, Holt, Barry, Henze

Ulrich Heinen (cello)

Méitier MSV 28511 (2 CDs) ***

Bach meets the 20th and 21st centuries in Ulrich Heinen's survey of the first five cello suites. Heinen's tone is soft-grained, his approach greatly concerned to make the music dance. But in the Bach the effect is sometimes a bit too matter-of-fact and tends towards choppiness. As a co-founder of the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Heinen (left) is on home territory in the later works, three of them written for him – Howard Skempton's mostly feather-light Six Figures; Simon Holt's Feet of Clay, which plays around with the traditional character of the cello; and Gerald Barry's Triorchic Blues, which simply ignores it. The set also includes Hans Werner Henze's evocative Serenade of 1949 and Bernd Alois Zimmermann's splintered Sonata of 1960. www.divine-art.co.uk

French and Brazilian Piano Music

Lyrita REAM.2111 (2 CDs) ***

What, you might wonder, is Lyrita doing reissuing the contents of two mono LPs, recorded a half century ago by a little-known pianist? Elizabeth Powell, born in France, and trained in England (as a wartime refugee) and France, has been based in Australia since 1971. The recordings of Poulenc she made in her mid-20s show an attractive approach that manages to be both cheeky and elegant, softer in contour than you’ll often hear, but as unsentimental as the composer himself had advised when Powell sought him out as a student. The dry recording actually suits the musical approach to the Poulenc quite well, but leaves the often foot-tapping Brazilian works by Villa-Lobos, Vianna and Mignone seeming too drained of colour. The Poulenc is the attraction in this twofer. www.lyrita.co.uk