Handel - Coronation Anthems

The Guardian 80

NDR Choir, Göttingen Festival Orchestra/Cummings (Accent)

You might not think to turn to a German recording of Handel’s quintessentially English Coronation Anthems, which learned so much from the example of Purcell, but this has a splendid combination of vitality and expressiveness. The choir of North German Radio has excellent English, the Göttingen Festival Orchestra is bursting with energy and Laurence Cummings is never too insistent but shapes the music with real warmth. Although recorded on two live occasions two years apart, the programme makes perfect sense as the bookends are Zadok the Priest (in Cummings’s hands a searing march) and the chorus “God is our hope” from Esther, which reuses the same music. Uplifting.