Acis and Galatea, though familiar to us as a work for soloists, chorus and orchestra, was originally composed on a more modest scale, almost certainly for just five singers and a modest group of players. Four had solo parts, and a fifth joined them to form the 'chorus'. Handel wrote it in the first place for performance at Cannons, the sumptuous residence of the Earl of Carnarvon (later the Duke of Chandos) in Edgware; it is tempting to think that it may have been given al fresco in the elegantly landscaped garden there. Later he adapted it in various ways, and for larger forces, for concert performances in London. But the intimacy of the smaller-scale version, which has often been given in concert form in recent years but not to my knowledge recorded, has its own special appeal, and to my mind both the sensuality of the first part and the elegiac quality of the second are more sharply and purely caught in this version.
So I am glad to have it on record. Robert King uses a band slightly larger than Handel is likely to have done (his strings are 4.4.2.2.1), which is perfectly acceptable and generally sweet-sounding. He is clearly concerned to preserve the chamber-music-like effect, and avoids, almost to a fault, anything that smacks of the dramatic or the theatrical. This may not be misguided, but I do feel at times that the expression is excessively subdued and that the stylized feelings characteristic of the pastoral genre (of which this is arguably the supreme example in the entire repertory) are apt to be construed as blandness.
King begins with a light and fluent, quite relaxed reading of the Sinfonia, with the sustaining oboes unusually prominent. Claron McFadden, a singer new to me, makes a charming Galatea, her words beautifully articulated, the voice quite light with a pleasant ring in the upper register. But ''Hush, ye pretty warbling quire'' is just a little sober; she sings of ''fierce desire'', but doesn't really seem to mean it. ''As when the dove'', too, is restrained; and the wonderful climax of the work, ''Heart, the seat of soft desire'', sung when she has transformed the dead Acis into a fountain, is to my mind a shade disappointing, bland and detached. Still, it is certainly attractive singing, controlled and nicely detailed. John Mark Ainsley makes a graceful Acis, light and eager in ''Where shall I seek the charming fair?'', but somewhat handicapped by the slow tempo in ''Love in her eyes sits playing'' and unable to make very much of it. There is just a little want here of character, of real ardour, in what is nevertheless an attractive and accomplished performance.
The part of Damon, the commonsense shepherd who regularly proffers good (and consistently ignored) advice to Acis and Polyphemus, is sung by Rogers Covey-Crump, who is as polished as always—listen for example to the perfectly placed high notes in ''Would you gain the tender creature'', or the deftly executed rhythms there. Everything he does is tasteful, even if the voice itself is not inherently specially appealing. Both his other two arias seem a shade lifeless. The singer most successful in characterizing the music is certainly Michael George, and not only because of the nature of the music itself: he shows an altogether greater awareness of the words, and their meaning, singing in fact like an interpreter of dramatic music in a way that no one else in the cast (or on the rostrum) is. I am several times uncertain about King's choice of tempo and its relation to the sense of the words and music. I cannot see why he elects to use organ continuo from time to time; and I much regret the dramatically damaging pauses he and the engineers usually allow between numbers.
The Archiv Produktion version under John Eliot Gardiner has held the field for some time now, and although it is not unflawed I think it still does so if it is a characterful and expressively aware performance of this vernal masterpiece that you are seeking. There are things in it I find unsatisfactory, but also many very fine ones, mostly from Anthony Rolfe Johnson's beautiful Acis, but also from the sophisticated Damon of Martyn Hill and Norma Burrowes's sensual if not quite impeccable Galatea. But if it is a performance of the original small-scale version you want, this new one serves more than adequately. It has the advantage of offering, in addition, the cantata Look down, harmonious Saint, probably composed in the first place for inclusion in Alexander's Feast. It is in effect a florid aria for tenor, which John Mark Ainsley sings most attractively, the runs of semiquavers beautifully poised and shaped.'