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Special offer. Handel in Rome
Nardus Williams (soprano)
The Dunedin Consort, John Butt
Awards:
-
Presto Recordings of the Year, Finalists 2024
-
Sunday Times, 20 Best Classical Albums of 2024
on the whole intelligent music-making from all contributors offers rewarding fresh ideas.
Special offer. Handel in Rome
Nardus Williams (soprano)
The Dunedin Consort, John Butt
Purchase product
Awards:
-
Presto Recordings of the Year, Finalists 2024
-
Sunday Times, 20 Best Classical Albums of 2024
on the whole intelligent music-making from all contributors offers rewarding fresh ideas.
About
Handel's arrival in Rome seems to have had a miraculous influence on his development as a composer. Something about the eternal city ignited the most productive period of his entire career: there Handel worked with some of the greatest musicians of the age and enjoyed the favours of major patrons of the arts. There he also witnessed the clerical aristocracy's sensual enjoyment of those very luxuries, excesses, and trappings of beauty that they professed to deny in their sermons. In Handel in Rome, Dunedin Consort and its director John Butt set out to convey Handel's response to this stimulating and somewhat paradoxical environment with three Italian cantatas. Winner of the Rising Talent award at the 2022 International Opera Awards, Nardus Williams is the star soprano.
Contents and tracklist
- Nardus Williams (soloist)
- The Dunedin Consort
- John Butt
- Nardus Williams (soloist)
- The Dunedin Consort
- John Butt
- Nardus Williams (soloist)
- The Dunedin Consort
- John Butt
- Nardus Williams (soloist)
- The Dunedin Consort
- John Butt
Spotlight on this release
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John Butt on Bach's elusive St Mark Passion (and theatrical Handel)
4th Sep 2025
The conductor of the Dunedin Consort talks about his upcoming performance of an innovative hybrid reconstruction of Bach's fragmentary third Passion setting, and his recent recording of dramatic Handel cantatas featuring soprano Nardus Williams.
Awards and reviews
-
Presto Recordings of the YearFinalists 2024
-
Sunday Times20 Best Classical Albums of 2024
December 2024
on the whole intelligent music-making from all contributors offers rewarding fresh ideas.
8th December 2024
Occasionally you might wish for clearer articulation of a decorative phrase, but such moments are easily outweighed by the rounded beauty of her voice, whatever the vocal extreme and however hot the drama or passion.
This is effectively a debut recital recording for the soprano Nardus Williams, and she is outstanding… her voice giving the impression that it’s about to come unmoored and yet remaining absolutely, thrillingly secure.
the instrumental details here are remarkable: there’s a furious viola da gamba accompaniment sufficient to wear fingers to the bone. Nothing, however, obscures the album’s chief glories: Handel himself, as always, and the lustrous firepower of Williams.
