Acis and Galatea

"Fine performances of Handel's delightful, brief pastoral are not rare ... Add this new winner under the baton of Harry Christophers and you find quite a recorded legacy ... A wonderful quintet of singers illuminates all of Handel's music. Grace Davidson's pure-as-snow soprano ... Jeremy Budd's light but centered tenor ... But all ears fall to Stuart Young's buffoon-like, murdering Polyphemus ... through his big sopranino recorder-accompanied aria and his part in the pre-murder trio ... The slimmed down forces, by the way, are in line with Handel's first performance of the work".

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"This performance replaces the John Eliot Gardiner as my new No. 1 Acis ... This brief work was the composer's most popular during his lifetime: the quick, charming, and eventually touching libretto ... is more than supported by Handel's crisp, memorable tunes that even at their most sentimental are never maudlin, and at their jolliest are truly toe-tapping ... Christian Curnyn leads with zip and sharp ... Tenor Allan Clayton is the least drippy Acis on disc, and in "Love in her eyes sits playing" sounds utterly enthralled with the love of his Galatea. And who wouldn't, in Lucy Crowe's performance ... Sound is wonderfully warm and realistic. Buy this".

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"[From] this charming masque - perhaps Handel's most ravishing score ... comes this equally vivid interpretation with the handful of roles well-characterised, and the score enlivened by the crisp and spirited rhythmic articulation by Christian Curnyn and the Early Opera Company ... Overall there is freshness to Curnyn's direction that evokes appropriately the Arcadian world of an innocent love-story murderously interrupted by the jealous Cyclops Polyphemus ... Allan Clayton brings Acis to life with his warmly ardent, mellifluous singing ... Likewise Lucy Crowe combines assurance and control as his lover, the nymph Galatea, with a musical delicacy ... Neal Davies provides fearful heft as Polyphemus".

"The chief strength of this account lies in the excellent instrumental playing ... Overall a good version, though several better it, notably William Christie's on Erato".

"Without undue hurry, [Christophers] keeps the delightful score bouncing merrily along; the instrumentalists supply expert playing ... Grace Davidson's Galatea offers a small but pretty soprano and Jeremy Budd's Acis is crisply articulated and emotionally engaged, while Stuart Young enjoys the comic-grotesque possibilities of the giant Polyphemus".

"Nach einer arg flotten Sinfonia gelingt es gleichwohl, eine schöne pastorale Stimmung aufzubauen. Als einzige Sängerin weiss Grace Davidson mit modifizierbaren Timbres und klarer Stimme zu überzeugen ... Die Tenöre sind grossartig besetzt. Alle Singen sehr klar und können trotz ihrer deutlich differenzierbaren Timbres eine recht grosse Strahlkraft entfalten".

"Curnyn has hit on a secret that eluded previous interpreters of this work: it was conceived specifically to showcase the beauty of the English language ... Channelling Handel's enthusiasm, Curnyn and his fellow artists forge a musical rhetoric powered by native sonorities ... Lucy Crowe as Galatea excels especially in turning words, and word-pictures, into sound ... This is, altogether, a benchmark that will be hard to beat".

"Teresa Wakim und aron Shehan geben ein überzeugendes Liebespaar ab, aber Douglas Williams ist stimmlich für die Partie des polternden Polyphem viel zu schwach".