Handel and Purcell: Baroque trumpet made anew

Here we find that marketing meets the Baroque, which will indeed test the old saying if it's not baroque, don't fix it.  This is sufficiently made of win as to make that unlikely.

EMI has a new Alison Balsom album out.  She's a rising star in the Baroque trumpet set, and a bit dishy to boot.  And so the Marketroids have a Youtube video promoting here new album of Handel and Purcell.  Since some of us would crawl on our hands and knees over broken glass for Handell and Purcell trumpet music, this dishiness seems a bit distracting.



There's a bit too much talking with not enough to say, but oh the music.  Sublime doesn't begin to describe it.  The tenor singing in falsetto would be a distraction, except that's precisely how it was done ca. 1700, when it was still somewhat scandalous for women to perform in public.  While there was rather a lot of that happening, you never would have seen in it Royal performances.

Alas, I do not have the lyrics to these works.  Handel was a native German (Georg Philip Handel, if you please) had an "interesting" view on English pronunciation.  There's quite a bit of inside humor in The Messiah, for example.

But all in all, well done to the EMI Marketroids.  This makes me want to take a listen to Ms. Balsom's album which, after all, is what marketing is all about.  Here's is another taste of Ms. Balsom's album.  Tasty indeed, especially with a good cup of coffee on a lazy  Sunday morning.



Full disclosure: I played trumpet for ten years in school, and entirely enjoyed the challenge of Purcell.  Alas, I never had the opportunity to sing falsetto, keeping my vocal escapades confined to the baritone range.