Oratorios tend to be more sober-minded affairs than operas, but not Handel’s Saul. Originally intended to prop up a faltering Italian opera season, its orchestral novelties included a carillon – a keyboard imitating chiming bells – to celebrate the victorious Israelite army, a harp for the shepherd boy David, three trombones for the famous Dead March and a set of supersized kettledrums borrowed for the occasion from the Tower of London. When it premiered in 1739 it was the longest music theatre work ever written in English.
Arcangelo, the London Handel festival’s principal ensemble in residence, seized on the music’s operatic intensity. Its founder Jonathan Cohen is one of the most expressive of Handelians with a keen ear for instrumental colour and a nose for drama. His pacing was urgent, though never excessively so, phrasing and dynamics were elegant and elastic, and the playing was outstanding (as you might expect for an orchestra packed with early music luminaries). An agile chorus of 30 sounded like double that number.
