• The English Concert, directed by Harry Bicket, has launched a new Handel opera series with one of his finest: Rodelinda (Linn), first performed at the King’s theatre, London in 1725 with top singers of the day. Bicket’s cast, too, is crammed with Handelian talent. Soprano Lucy Crowe sings the title role, always brilliant in precision and expressive power, as heard in her sorrowful aria Ombre, piante. The countertenor Iestyn Davies, as her “dead” husband Bertarido, invests every word, every note with intensity, and sends the dramatic temperature soaring at each entry. The chiming timbres of the contralto Jess Dandy (Eduige) and countertenor Tim Mead (Unulfo), tenor Joshua Ellicott (Grimoaldo) and bass Brandon Cedel (Garibaldo) complete a first-rate lineup.
Occasionally, fleetingly, the need for social distancing threatens ensemble – the recording was made in St John’s Smith Square in September 2020 – but this adds a sense of risk to music already, in its energy and complexity, on the edge. The English Concert’s playing is pliant, warm, elegant. If the rest of the project reaches this standard, we’re in luck.
• After a two-year break owing to a hand injury, the classical guitarist Miloš – London-based, born in Montenegro, full name Miloš Karadaglić – gave the world premiere at the 2018 BBC Proms of Joby Talbot’s Ink Dark Moon. This concerto is one of two premiere recordings on Miloš: The Moon and the Forest (Decca), with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Ben Gernon, and Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, conductor Alexander Shelley.
Miloš’s aim is to find new works that can match the popularity of that mainstay for guitar and orchestra, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez. In its journeys from poetic intimacy to high-energy rhythmic finale, Talbot’s work is idiomatic, meticulously detailed, the balance between soloist and orchestra well-achieved. The second premiere, The Forest, is a less meaty, impressionistic work by the film composer Howard Shore (The Lord of the Rings).
Also look out for another guitar disc, a solo recital recorded with an immediate, ample sound: My European Journey by Alexandra Whittingham (Delphian): 19th-century miniatures played by a young 21st-century virtuoso.
• Strike up: in The Listening Service this week, Tom Service explores the changing world of brass bands with Elland silver youth band director Samantha Harrison and composer Gavin Higgins. Tomorrow, BBC Radio 3, 5pm.
