Gioas Re Di Giuda

Written for London audiences in 1770, Johann Christian Bach’s only extant oratorio, Gioas, Re di Guida, is a proverbial curate’s egg. Attempting to please both those weaned on Handel and those hoping to hear the oratorio genre given a rococo makeover, it failed to please either. Such was London’s veneration for the spirit of Handel that Bach was booed when he dared play an organ interlude between acts, and despite George III’s patronage, the work was soon neglected. Audiences of the time simply did not want to hear Italian operatic conventions in their oratorios. Over 200 years later, such considerations are, thankfully, far less important. While it remains slightly disconcerting to hear quasi-Handelian choruses interpolated into what is in every other respect an opera seria, Bach’s graceful galant manner and his easy, fluid way with vocal melody remain as delightful as ever throughout an increasingly dramatic succession of accompanied recitatives, arias and duets. The fulsome choruses themselves turn out to be the work’s most colourful elements. Hermann Max follows his previous London Bach recording, La Clemenza di Scipione, with another sympathetic reading. His period-instrument band Das Kleine Konzert, his soloists--Kai Wessel, Ulrike Staude, Mechthild Georg and Markus Schafer--and the Rheinische Kantorei all sound comfortably at ease with the composer’s mellifluous idiom. As part of the ongoing renaissance of JC Bach’s works, this new recording presents us with, if not exactly a lost masterpiece, a substantial and rewarding addition to his discography. --Mark Walker