Arianna Savall, Petter Udland Johansen, Die Freitagsakademie – If Love’s A Sweet Passion. Works by Handel & Purcell CD

With If Love’s a Sweet Passion, soprano Arianna Savall, tenor Petter Udland Johansen, and the Freitagsakademieunder the direction of Katharina Suske present a carefully curated selection of vocal and instrumental works by Henry Purcell and George Frideric Handel. The album illuminates essential aspects of Baroque affect, stylistic hybridity and dramatic rhetoric. Its programme brings together Purcell’s distinctly English musical language—marked by rhetorical clarity and subtle chromatic inflection—with Handel’s Italianate, operatically expansive melodic writing and his masterful shaping of musical character.   Fairy queen (Z.629) Duetto: If love’s a sweet passion King Arthur (Z.628) Air: How Blessed are Shepards (Tenor) Solomon HWV 67 Recitative: May peace in Salem ever dwell! (Queen of Sheba) Aria: Will the sun forget to streak (Queen of Sheba) Esther (HWV 50), Arie: Tune your harps (1st Israelite) Amadigi di Gaula (HWV 11) Recitative: Il crudel m’abbandona (Melissa) Aria: Ah! Spietato! (Melissa) L’Allegro, il Penseroso, ed il Moderato (HWV 55) Duetto: As steals the morn Terpsichore (HWV 8b), Chaconne Giulio Cesare (HWV 17) Recitative: Che sento? Oh Dio!  (Cleopatra) Aria: Se pietà di me non senti (Cleopatra) Semele (HWV 58) Aria: Where’re you walk (Jupiter) Aria: I must with speed (Jupiter) Acis & Galatea: Recitative: Ye verdant plains and woody mountains (Galatea) Recitative: O didst thou know the pains (Galatea Aria: As when the dove laments her love (Galatea) Acis & Galatea (HW49) Recitative: ´Tis done, Heart (Galatea) Aria: Heart, the seat of soft delight (Galatea Dido and Aeneas (1689) Recitativ: Thy hand Belinda! (Dido) Arie: Dido’s Lament King Arthur (Z.628) Chaconne and Duetto: How happy the lover