Handel, a remembrance of things past

The elegant melodies, tender harmonies and touching emotions in Handel's arias evoke in us the stories of operatic heroes, biblical characters out of the oratorios or the intimacy of an evening concert in a palace in London, Rome or Hamburg.

The Neun Deutsche Arien - Nine German Arias - on this programme bear a close musical resemblance to the operas and oratorios Handel wrote in London - Giulio Cesare, Tamerlano, Rodelinda, Judas Maccabaeus or the even the Messiah, to name a few. The same can be said of his Trio Sonatas, the most exquisite chamber music Handel ever wrote.

Few German texts were ever set to music by Handel, despite his Saxon origins. Around the time of the composition of the Neun Deutsche Arien (1724-1727), Handel made one last trip to Germany to bid farewell to his ailing mother. The poems of Barthold Heinrich Brocke,
with whom Handel certainly shared some pietistic inclinations, aside, this might well be what encouraged the Londoner by adoption, to return after so many years to his mother tongue and to set these intimate and personal texts to music. Could it possibly be as a
remembrance of things past...