Friday, May 12, 2023 • 8pm Sanders Theatre, Cambridge
Israel in Egypt, written two years before Messiah, may be Georg Friedrich Handel’s most ambitious choral work. Most of the 90 or so minutes of music belong to the choir, and Handel poured his heart and soul into the writing. The result is a mesmerizing showcase of styles, colors, and textures for both the instruments and voices. Israel in Egypt chronicles the exodus of the Israelites and the plagues that besieged Egypt. It showcases the composer’s vivid imagination and inherent understanding of human nature.
BOSTON MUSICAL INTELLIGENCER
This collective story of faith and overcoming adversity was performed by the Back Bay Chorale in their season’s final concert, under the direction of guest conductor Anthony Trecek-King
Back Bay Chorale Strikes Fire with Exodus by Lee Eiseman
Handel wrote so many oratorios on Jewish subjects, including Solomon, Esther, Joseph, Saul, Judas Maccabeus, that one could even consider accepting his exceedingly pleasing and popular Israel in Egypt as a partial reparation to the Jewish people for 500 years of slavery in Egypt. Of course, referring to Israel in Egypt as “pleasing” accepts its celebration of violence and God’s wrath against the Egyptians (we know that Handel is taking God’s words in Exodus for it); a trigger warning is probably warranted. In the vivid show, God takes great pleasure in plaguing, smiting, and drowning the Israelites’ enemies, and listeners can very much enjoy Handel’s superb word painting. The strings’ swirling swarms of 32nd-note flies and lice tops the category.*
Presenters in our times usually omit the first part of the oratorio, “Lamentation of the Israelites for the Death of Joseph,” as did Handel after 1739, when the work, with an unpopular 1/5 ratio of arias to choruses, failed to achieve success. But that elision would start the show too inwardly beginning in the reflective opening tenor recitative. Thus guest conductor Anthony Trecek-King employed the instrumental portion of the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline as an overture. A few conductors, most successfully John Elliot Gardiner, have begun with the original Joseph. Read more