Saturday 21 August 2021, 9pm
Eglise Abbatiale de Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye
Festival Berlioz de la Côte-Saint-André
Wenesday 15 December 2021, 8pm
MC2: Grenoble
Festival Berlioz
With
Hervé Niquet, conductor
François Saint-Yves, positive organ
Florie Valiquette, Lucie Edel, sopranos
Ambroisine Bré, alto / Kresimir Spicer, tenor
Andreas Wolf, bass / Tomislav Lavoie, bass
Le Concert Spirituel, Choir and Orchestra
G. F. Haendel
Concerto pour orgue en fa majeur
Israël in Egypte
Oratorio
Berlioz admired Handel's music and frequently conducted his works, especially his oratorios. In Israel in Egypt, which features a very large choir, Handel elaborates his text with quotations from the Bible and tells the story of the liberation of the Jewish people from the Egyptian yoke, with the famous episodes of the ten plagues of Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea.
As a prelude, the Organ Concerto HWV 295, nicknamed "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale" because of the motifs in the second movement, was composed as an interlude to Israel in Egypt at its premiere in 1739 at the King's Theatre in London.
Production AIDA / Festival Berlioz. Co-production avec Le Concert Spirituel, en partenariat avec la MC2: Maison de la Culture de Grenoble. The Agence Iséroise de Diffusion Artistique (AIDA), which supports the Berlioz Festival, and Le Concert Spirituel are joining forces to develop musical projects in the Isère region.
