A failure in Handel's lifetime, Israel in Egypt became one of his most popular oratorios after his death. Setting a chunk of the book of Exodus, it depicts the liberation of the Israelites from servitude in Egypt - complete with graphic descriptions of the 12 plagues visited on their oppressors, and the crossing of the Red Sea - before culminating in what is effectively the first Biblical psalm, sung by the Israelites after their release from bondage.
Written in 1738, as Handel's operatic career was drawing to a close, it is an ebullient, hugely inventive work. It is as if the change of form from opera to oratorio had given him a new lease of creative life. Typically, it is sensuous rather than pious. Religion, for Handel, never meant turning away from the world, but celebrating the physical universe as a manifestation of God's glory.
More than any of his other oratorios, however, Israel in Egypt places the dramatic and narrative burden on the chorus. This performance appropriately marked the 25th anniversary of The Sixteen, the exemplary choir founded by Harry Christophers, who, with their associate orchestra, The Symphony of Harmony and Invention, have built up a reputation for being second to none in Handel.
They sing the work with breathtaking panache and bring an incisive clarity to Handel's complex polyphony, and you can also hear every single word, which is rare. The playing was equally dextrous, a glorious blaze of trumpets and drums for the climactic passages, and silky strings and woodwind elsewhere. Christophers was also keen to emphasise the harmonic ingenuity and emotional range of Handel's depiction of the plagues, with the mood veering from broad comedy, as frogs hop round Pharaoh's bedroom, to dissonant shock as darkness descends on Egypt.
Though the soloists have a comparatively ungrateful time of it, they remain important, however, and it was here that Christophers slipped up a bit. Handel used the stars of his day, getting them to reinforce the choral lines throughout. Christophers reversed the process by taking them from his choristers. The two sopranos, Elizabeth Cragg and Anhgarad Gruffydd Jones, sounded glorious as their voices wound round each other in their big duet. Tenor Matthew Vine was poised and athletic in his big coloratura aria, but some of the others were occasionally underpowered. These were minor flaws, however, that didn't detract from the elation generated by the whole.
