Record Review
2nd April 2022
Record of the Week

Gramophone June 2022
Recording of the Month

Lucy Crowe (Angel), Sophie Bevan (Mary Magdalene), Iestyn Davies (Mary Cleophas), Hugo Hymas (John the Evangelist), Ashley Riches (Lucifer)

The English Concert, Harry Bicket

Following their acclaimed recording of Handel’s Rodelinda (BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Month, Gramophone Editor’s Choice), The English Concert and Harry Bicket continue their Handel series with a superb soloist line-up including Sophie Bevan, Iestyn Davies, Ashley Riches, Hugo Hymas and Lucy Crowe. Starting with an unusual verbal altercation between an Angel and Lucifer, Handel’s La Resurrezione is an extraordinary retelling of the three days between Christ’s death and resurrection which is unlike any other Passion or Oratorio. This journey centres around women, Mary Magdalene and Mary Cleophas, in a way that seems very modern, and which mirrors the ambiguities of their feelings in music that is completely original in concept and orchestration. The journey from grief, through hope, to love is wonderfully depicted. The message seems to be that grief is the price we pay for love; and that should be part of the narrative of our lives, not the defining moment.

"Everything has the effect of pulling the listener right inside the human drama of the Easter story crafted by Handel and his Italian librettist. This is not directly Jesus’s story, more the story of his effect on others; like Sophie Bevan’s lyrically grieving Mary Magdalene and Iestyn Davies’ equally eloquent Mary Cleophas (Jesus’s aunt, by some accounts), or Lucy Crowe’s encouraging Angel and the sweetened firebrand of Hugo Hymas’s St John." - The Times