Supreme soprano star of Handel disc

Nuria Rial is the standout star on this excellent recording Handel's German Arias and Music for the Royal Fireworks

Composer: Handel
Repertoire: German Arias; Music for the Royal Fireworks (arr. Oman) 
Artists: Nuria Rial (soprano), Austrian Baroque Company/Michael Oman
Rating:  4/5
Genre: Vocal/Instrumental
Label: Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 88697 48393-2

Handel clearly valued the nine German texts of Heinrich Brockes’s Earthly Pleasure in God, which he chose to set more than a decade after settling in London. There’s something of the confessional about the composer’s German arias, for all their passages of operatic display and liberal quotations from Handel’s Italian operas and cantatas. Rial and Oman’s Austrian band strike a winning balance between the intimate and the extrovert, especially so in their sublime reading of Süße Stille, sanfte Quelle. Oman’s chamber arrangement of the Fireworks Music, crowned by his fine recorder playing, is overshadowed by Rial’s delightful work.