Voices of Connection: 07/05 Handel: Israel in Egypt – “He gave them hailstones”
THIS WEEK WE REVISIT CONTRIBUTIONS FROM GUEST CURATOR BOB LEE
Robert E. Lee III, a Voices of Ascension subscriber and donor, describes himself as an enthusiastic autodidact. He confesses to buying more than 10,000 recordings over the years, and before the pandemic shutdown, he was an inveterate concertgoer in New York City’s music scene. During his 30-year career as a money market broker at Tullett Prebon Holdings, Bob lectured widely throughout the U.S. about the Federal Funds market and The Federal Reserve Bank. He joined the Board of Directors of The American Opera Project in 1997, becoming its President in 2001. In 2009, Bob retired as Vice President of Tullett Prebon to take on the additional position of AOP's Managing Director. In 2018 he left AOP to become an independent Arts Management consultant. Bob also served on the Board of the New York Innovative Theatre Foundation from 2004 to 2014.
I simply adore this piece. Of course there are loads of other great descriptive choruses in Handel but this, in my opinion, is the most energetic, which meant a lot to me when I first encountered Israel in Egypt in my late teens. It was also when listening to “He gave them hailstones” that I realized Handel wasn’t really writing about the Israelites and the Egyptians, but the Protestant English and (mainly French) Catholics. The emphatic final orchestral cadence sounds to my ears like the musical equivalent of "take THAT you impious papists!"
The Mackerras recording I’ve selected is the one I owned back then. While the amateur Leeds chorus is much bigger and slightly less polished than what we now consider acceptable, I feel they more than make up for it with their super-spirited, almost savage delivery. I still get shivers down my spine each time they cry out ‘Fire!’ and ‘Hailstones’ like they themselves are hurling flaming thunderbolts down upon those miserable Egyptians (or French??).
– Bob Lee