Live recording from Philharmonie Luxembourg, Théatre des Champs Elysées, Auditorium Dijon, October 2009.

For more than two and a half centuries Israel in Egypt has remained an exceptional choral work. Of all the oratorios written by the composer, none, not even Messiah attains the variety of its choral and orchestral writing.

Nowhere else except in his Dixit Dominus does Handel demand so much of the singers of the double chorus. The dramatic potential of the chorus is exploited down to the smallest detail through the use of scoring mostly for eight voices, thus accentuating the effects of mass and contrast. Every device in the choral arsenal is brought into play, including fugue and double fugue, recitative, arioso, homophonic declamation, and the figuralism (word-painting) is taken to the extreme. The two choruses interpolate and the colourful orchestral accompaniment is of a power that is rare.