Pleasure and Virtue

Two performances of Handel’s Choice of Hercules given this weekend in two very different venues with diametrically opposite acoustics.   The beautiful Baroque Library (formerly All Saints’ Church) at Lincoln College, Oxford made an appropriately period setting, and the architecture responded wonderfully to the wizardry of Ian Chandler’s colourfully lighting: the cherubs over the former altar looking as though they were streaked with brilliant coloured paint – green, red and blue.  We were given the warm est welcome and reception at the College.  Sadly Saturday’s country-house performance was timed with  the worst ‘midsummer’ weather imaginable, and with several hours of waiting around in a very cold marquee, it was not the most enjoyable performance for the musicians, “Yet can I hear that dulcet lay” was accompanied by a monsoon thundering on the marquee roof.  Nevertheless the music won the day, and we are grateful for both invitations to perform this glorious work.