It’s about Israel in an Egypt confrontation
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
When Georg Frideric Handel lived in London in the first half of the 18th century, there was not much to do after a concert and a composer could drone on as long as he liked. Handel’s propensity for inordinate length was tolerated for a couple of decades, but the backlash caught up with him in April 1739…
Read on here.
And here.
I enjoyed that review, but am confused about what your headline is supposed to be saying.
How can a version edited down to fit on one CD be a reference version of anything? OK, he’s not your favourite composer (I think Mahler deserves the inordinate length jibe rather more), but recommending this as a reference short changes readers.
I enjoy the whole thing and truly do not see the need for cuts, especially in a recording.
So then it is likely that she would bring this cut version to the NY Philharmonic for next week’s concerts. A work that the NY Phil has not played in the whole 20th century – there was a Walter Damrosch pewrformance in 1891!
It does seem, lately, that concerts are suffering from what Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza referred to (true, in a different context) as shrinkage.
Only a few weeks ago Jader Bignamini, substituting for an indisposed Gianandrea Noseda, conducted the National Symphony in Washington in a program of Respighi’s Fountains of Rome, Pines of Rome, and Roman Festivals.
That was the whole program (chosen actually by Noseda). It used to be that these poems were played in the second part of a concert, and something else was offered in the first part.
Shrinkage, indeed.