Susanna (1749) is based on a tale from the Apocrypha. Two hypocritical pillars of the establishment make sexual advances to Susanna when she is about to bathe in a stream. Rejected by the virtuous newly wed heroine (whose husband Joacim is away on business for a week), they vengefully accuse her of adultery. Just when the trumped-up charge appears to be leading inexorably to the innocent heroine’s execution, she is defended by the young Daniel, who discerns and exposes the lies of the spiteful perverts (who are themselves sentenced to death).

This live recording, made at the Göttingen Handel Festival, is conducted sagely by Laurence Cummings, whose direction is alert to the broad range of dramatic atmospheres, situations, characterisations and musical styles in the oratorio. Each strand in the ominous Overture is delineated transparently by the Göttingen Festival Orchestra. The NDR Choir are for the most part adroitly disciplined, although the undernourished tenor line seldom projects essential contrapuntal details, and on occasion unbridled sopranos and basses pull the precision of textures apart. A few missteps from the generally excellent cast can be attributed to the heat of the moment inevitable (perhaps even desirable) in a flesh-and-blood live concert performance that lacks the luxury of measured reconsideration and studio retakes.

Emily Fons’s wayward embellishments inject unwelcome bulginess into Susanna’s blissful pastoral ‘Crystal streams in murmur flowing’ (the murmured exchange of trills between the first and second violins are breathtaking), and heavy-handed over-ornamentation hinders ‘If guiltless blood be your intent’; however, Fons’s unadorned and emotionally bare singing in ‘Faith displays her rosy wing’ captures a truthful simplicity that reaches the dramatic kernel of the condemned victim’s situation, and her vivacious coloratura in the heroine’s giddy vindication ‘Guilt trembling spoke my doom’ is spot-on. Christopher Lowrey’s supple technique, artistry and embellishments are responsive to gleefully scampering orchestral violins and crisp basso continuo-playing in Joacim’s ‘When first I saw my lovely maid’, and his virile pinpoint coloratura is both ardent and intelligently musical (‘On the rapid whirlwind’s wing’). Lowrey and Fons excel in their duets; their lilting semiquavers moving in thirds peal perfectly in ‘When thou art nigh’.

Colin Balzer sings with unforced clarity, excellent diction and exemplary embellishment as the First Elder, whose complaint about ‘Tyrannic love’ is confirmed as one of Handel’s most ingenious accompanied recitatives. Raimund Nolte’s thunderous Second Elder lacks the mocking humour that Handel implies (at first), and his Germanic pronunciation sticks out like a sore thumb; doubling up as Susanna’s father Chelsias, Nolte sings the extrovert trumpet aria ‘Raise your voice to sounds of joy’ with aplomb. Ciara Hendrick sings the Attendant’s little songs in Act 1 with graceful shapeliness; she reappears in Act 3 as the young Daniel, whose response to the sneering Second Elder is brilliantly interpreted with witty sarcasm (‘’Tis not age’s sullen face’).

The booklet contains an illuminating essay by Wolfgang Sandberger and reproduces several paintings depicting the lecherous elders spying on the bathing Susanna (Guercino, Jan Massys, Tintoretto, Guido Reni and Rembrandt). Notwithstanding a few reservations, this is a valuable new perspective on Handel’s late masterpiece.