Handel: Israel in Egypt

Argenta, Van Evera, Wilson, Rolfe Johnson, Thomas, White, Taverner Choir & Players. Recorded 1989, Abbey Road Studios, London.

Released 1990 on EMI Reflexe (CDS 7 54018 2). Reissued 1996 (7243 5 61350 2 4) and 2009 (7243 5 62155 2 8) on EMI Virgin Veritas.

Reviews:

[This] is a natural choice for Andrew Parrott and his Taverner Choir and Players, whose special strengths surely lie in choral music…..This is in fact a fine performance, and what is more a complete one—the first complete recording of this work in its full original form, as far as I am aware. 

Parrott aims at a firm, well-formed choral sound, with a good, natural blend of tone. The lines are clean, well focused and strongly sustained. His conducting is restrained and he makes no attempt to insert specious dramatic effects. The opening chorus, ''The sons of Israel do mourn'', is very grand and noble, with its slow-moving choral lines against orchestral counterpoints at the start, developing into a full-scale fugal chorus, and followed by two further sections to make a truly mighty opening number, severe and powerfully elegiac.

Part Two begins with yet another slow chorus; but the Exodus section of course includes the famous group of Plague choruses, which are vivid in their pictorial effects. ''They loathed to drink'' is powerfully sung, and in the air ''Their land brought forth frogs'' the illustrative violin figures are graphically done. ''He spake the word'', with its plague of flies represented in the violins, is punched out at a brisk tempo, as too is the hailstone chorus, and the smiting of the first-born is conveyed with due violence, the brazen trombones prominent. ''He led them through the deep'', one of those choruses where Handel combines a striding theme with virile counterpoints, is another that goes with a fine swing.’

Stanley Sadie, Gramophone