January 17, 1998

MENDELSSOHN: Elijah

Fleming, Crabtree, Bardon; Terfel, Munro, Ainsley, Bowen, N. Davies, Moses; Edinburgh Festival Chorus, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Daniel. London 455688 (2)

Bryn Terfel's triumphant Elijah and Paul Daniel's incisive conducting key this magisterial performance of Mendelssohn's most famous oratorio. The Welsh baritone is a wonderful Elijah, whose reply to the grieving Widow ("Give me thy son!") is as charged with compassion as his angry confrontation with Ahab or his stunning "Lord God of Abraham" is with Old Testament thunder. Renée Fleming, urgent yet surpassingly beautiful of tone as the Widow, also delivers several soprano solos, among them a well-judged "Hear ye, Israel." Treble Matthew Munro is exemplary as the Boy, John Mark Ainsley an aptly eager Obadiah.