COMPOSERS: Handel
LABELS: Sony
WORKS: Rinaldo
PERFORMER: Ileana Cotrubas, Carolyn Watkinson & Paul Esswood La Grande Ecurie et La Chambre du Roy/Jean-Claude Malgoire
CATALOGUE NO: 88697576412
Still piling some of its oldies on the ever-fashionable Handel bandwagon, Sony has a few gold nuggets hidden in its 1977 recording of Rinaldo. Malgoire’s early period-instrument forays sound thin, ragged and sometimes ponderous indeed alongside the New Authentics we are used to, and the singing is often second-file, but Ileana Cotrubas’s Almirena is what I’d been waiting for: her ‘Lascio ch’io pianga’ is one of the great Handel moments. David Nice