Dunedin Consort - Handel: Samson - The Daily Mail

This is the best we have yet had from John Butt and his Dunedin Consort of Edinburgh. Apart from Messiah, Samson is the Handel oratorio with the most elevated text: librettist Newburgh Hamilton used John Milton's Samson Agonistes as its basis.

Handel rose to the challenge and composed a string of incomparable choruses and arias, the finest being Let The Bright Seraphim for soprano and Honour and Arms for bass.

Butt increases the chorus slightly over what Handel had, and both singing and playing are first-rate.