Considering what beguiling and inventive pieces they are, and the scope they offer for vocal artistry, Handel’s duets have not been much recorded. He wrote some of them in Italy and in Hanover, before he settled in London; more surprisingly, he returned to the duet in his London days, writing a few just before Messiah (and then drawing on them for four choruses in that work) and some even after his return from Dublin. Most are for two sopranos, or soprano and alto. This CD offers what seem to be the first recordings of two of the eight here: the early Va, speme infida pur, where a vigorous setting of the opening lines (“Go, faithless hope”) returns effectively at the end, after more lyrical sections, to parallel the singer’s final rejection of the hope of love, a device Handel did not apparently use otherwise; and the late Ahi, nelle sorti umane, where an expansive slow movement is followed by a livelier one with some deft word-painting, notably where, as Mark Risinger’s perceptive and informative note points out, the voices run together for the words “compagni insieme vanno” (“keep company together”). The disc also offers both the duets on which Handel drew for Messiah.
Pamela Murray and Pamela Dellal are both accomplished singers, well able to tackle the divisions cleanly. Murray has a good ring to her soprano, and plenty of brightness and weight; Dellal, who sings as both soprano and alto, offers a pleasantly full and mellow lower and middle register but also tackles notes above the treble stave surely and with little evident strain. Both use rather more vibrato than might be ideal for this music. They also sing in a rather heavy and sustained style. This serves reasonably well for the long lines of Beato in ver chi puo, but the vast majority of movements here need more air in the lines and some lightness of manner; Fronda leggiera, for example, emerges with little of its proper vivacity, and that goes for virtually all the quicker movements. They also tend to sing too loudly and certainly at too unvaried a volume; there is little of light and shade. The music can’t fail to be enjoyable, but could have been rather more so.'