conductor Peter Whelan on bringing the Dublin model of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast to life with the Irish Baroque Orchestra

Peter Whelan conducting Mozart’s Symphony No.41 “Jupiter”, picture taken from video filmed on the Whyte Recital Corridor on the Royal Irish Academy of Music, 9/9/2023. Produced by November Seven Movies.

Conductor Peter Whelan is bringing the Irish Baroque Orchestra (IBO), of which he’s inventive director, to the BBC Proms this Summer season with a efficiency of Handel’s Alexander’s Feast. As with their efficiency of Handel’s Messiah at Wigmore Corridor in 2023 [see my review], there may be an Irish connection, and the ensemble might be exploring the model of Alexanders Feast that Handel produced for his go to to Dublin in 1742. As inventive associate of Irish Nationwide Opera, Peter has performed the IBO in a number of productions, together with two imaginative productions of Vivaldi operas, Bajazet in 2022 [see my review] and L’Olimpiade in 2024 [see my review]. It was just lately introduced that Peter would be the subsequent inventive director of Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco.

Peter Whelan (Photograph: Marco Borggreve)

Throughout a fascinating couple of hours that I spent chatting with Peter, we lined quite a lot of floor, however what struck me was not simply his ardour for the music however the best way the story behind the music was essential to him. He mentions as a toddler studying about Handel coming to Eire and being taken with the story, this appears to have sparked an curiosity not solely in music however within the tales behind it.

With IBO, he has produced a putting collection of discs in Linn Data exploring Baroque music in Eire by specializing in the tales of various characters from Irish musical historical past, illuminating the 18th-century musical lifetime of the nation. The latest is Rachel Baptist: Eire’s Black Syren, and others embrace Mr Charles the Hungarian: Handel’s rival in Dublin, The Trials of Tenducci: A Castrato in Eire, and Welcome Residence Mr Dubourg.

Nevertheless, we started our chat with Handel’s Alexander’s Feast. Throughout August, Peter and IBO might be performing this at Kilkenny Arts Competition, Dublin HandelFest, the BBC Proms on the Royal Albert Corridor, and at Snape Maltings in Aldeburgh as a part of Summer season at Snape. To a sure extent, the selection of Alexander’s Feast for the BBC Proms was pragmatic; every year on the Proms, there may be often an enormous work by Handel and by Bach, and also you want a grand work to suit the house. The efficiency would even be an opportunity to recreate the 1742 Dublin model of Alexander’s Feast, which has by no means been carried out in trendy occasions. And there may be the extra profit that the piece is concerning the therapeutic energy of music. Peter additionally proudly factors out that the IBO will solely be the second group from the Republic of Eire to carry out on the BBC Proms (the earlier one was within the Seventies).

Handel wrote Alexander’s Feast initially in 1736, setting an adaptation of John Dryden’s Ode for St Cecilia’s Day (initially set in 1697 by Jeremiah Clarke), however Handel revised the work for subsequent performances and it was one of many scores he took with him to Eire in 1742 when he was invited there. Peter has been working with the Handel scholar Donald Burrows on the 1742 model, which had very specific circumstances behind it. Handel supposed to make use of the singing males from St Patrick’s Cathedral for his efficiency, however the Dean objected. The Dean on the time was Jonathan Swift, who was starting to undergo his psychological decline and had develop into considerably cantankerous. The consequence was that Swift wrote what Peter calls an incredible letter to Handel asserting that not one of the singing males might participate within the efficiency.

Because of this, Handel misplaced his refrain and his male soloists. It’s thought that he used theatre singers as an alternative. The libretto and the conducting rating for the Dublin efficiency each survive, the latter with the names of the soloists written in. The unique Alexander’s Feast was in two elements, however this model was divided into three. Of the music, only one aria was lacking. Donald Burrows discovered the bass half for the lacking aria some a long time in the past, and together with the phrases (from the surviving libretto), he and Peter have been reconstructing the aria. Peter describes it as an interesting course of, reverse engineering the aria. Once we spoke, he described them as almost there, discovering the method fairly thrilling.

He feels that there’s nice scope for participating the tradition of the previous. There was an enormous swell of curiosity in Irish classical music, with individuals desirous about who they’re otherwise, in much less colonial phrases. Within the USA, he has discovered that there’s a huge urge for food from these of Irish descent for Irish tradition that isn’t merely about getting drunk on St. Patrick’s Day.

Peter Whelan & La Festa Musicale in Hannover (Photograph: Nils Ole Peters)

As we be taught extra about Handel’s keep in Dublin, it turns into obvious that the musical requirements had been considerably larger than commentators initially believed. Lots of his musicians had been taken from the Irish State Music at Dublin Citadel (dwelling of the Viceroy). Many of those had been outsiders, together with quite a lot of Hungarians. One such was the violinist Matthew Dubourg, who was illegitimate, and it’s price remembering that when he took a job in Dublin, it was the second largest metropolis within the Empire. The violinist Francesco Geminiani (who was Matthew Dubourg’s instructor) lived in Dublin for a time, however although he taught there, he couldn’t have an official put up as he was a Roman Catholic.

There was additionally quite a lot of crossover with conventional Irish tradition. Peter tells a narrative about Matthew Dubourg going to a rustic truthful dressed up as a fiddler with the intention to get Irish tunes, and being mobbed when the native musicians realised the standard of the violin Dubourg was taking part in. There’s a manuscript by Dubourg of Irish tunes with the Gaelic phrases written phonetically, and one sketch has an Irish tune on one facet and ‘He was despised’ from Messiah on the opposite.

Peter has been on a journey to indicate that classical music belongs in Eire. He factors out that pianist and composer John Subject’s father labored at Dublin Citadel, while the tenor Michael Kelly’s father was a wine service provider, and all of the musicians went to his place for a drink. Kelly would go on to create the roles of Don Curzio and Don Basilio for Mozart in Le nozze di Figaro, however as a younger man, he had met all of the Italian singers visiting Dublin at his father’s bar.

While the world of recording is fading, recordings are nonetheless a calling card, and Peter feels you possibly can pull individuals in by a narrative or narrative. He finds that there is no such thing as a finish to tales for inspiration; you come throughout one other little character from historical past that you just can’t fairly let go of. He’s spurred on by the story-telling; for a lay particular person, classical music might be intimidating, and tales connected to a spot, or a story a couple of character from historical past, can draw the viewers into the story.

Peter mentions the porter who carried individuals’s devices, however who was accused of body-snatching and deported, or the Italian violinist Pietro Castrucci, who moved to Dublin when he obtained older and died there, destitute. Then there was the castrato Tenducci (topic of IBO’s disc The Trials of Tenducci: A Castrato in Eire), who lived in Eire and seduced an Irish woman, Dorothea Maunsell. At one level, he was in Cork jail. The pair had been chased out of Eire and reportedly seen by Casanova, dwelling in London as a pair with kids! IBO’s most up-to-date disc shines a highlight on the profession of Rachel Baptist, who was a Black soprano, huge within the 1750s. Little is thought about her past what she sang and the truth that she wore a yellow gown, however it’s possible that 18th-century Dublin was considerably extra accepting than London.

Typically, Peter admits, typically the character is likely to be fascinating, however the music related to the particular person isn’t as nice. Nevertheless, he feels that there’s all the time house for this repertoire because it places the better-known works in context. He learn music at Trinity Faculty, Dublin, and music books had been dismissive of the music in Eire. At a sure level in his profession, he determined to discover this music himself, founding Ensemble Marsyas for the aim, directing from the keyboard. This enabled him to discover music such because the Royal Birthday Odes written for efficiency at Dublin Citadel.

He was interested in why Handel got here to Eire in 1742. There was a small however lively live performance scene in Dublin at that interval, and there’s a letter written by Handel the place he says that the Dublin musicians had been glorious. Handel was near Matthew Dubourg, who was live performance grasp at Dublin Citadel from 1728 to 1764, and actually, Dubourg was the one musician to whom Handel left cash in his will. And Dubourg’s son-in-law wrote that Handel had a stroke while he was in Dublin, however he was staying within the Surgeon Common’s Home and was nursed again to well being.

There are such a lot of fascinating tales to inform, notably in the best way communities journey, that Peter feels his story-based method will proceed. The tales behind the person solos might be unbelievable. He mentions the Dutch oboist, Jean Christian Kytch, who was often called ‘Handel’s oboist’. When he might now not play, he grew to become destitute, and the plight of his kids after his dying seemingly prompted the institution of the Fund for the Assist of Decayed Musicians and their Households (now the Royal Society of Musicians). Handel contributed generously to the fund.

Irish Baroque Orchestra & Peter Whelan (Photograph: Pawel Bebenca)

There there may be solely so shut that you could get to the previous, some issues might be unknowable. Nevertheless, there may be now a group of people that love the music and the way it sounds, and are researching additional. Society is so fragmented that musicians are by no means going to compete with Netflix, however for Peter, classical music is a spot the place you possibly can carry individuals collectively on the similar time. And in spite of everything, music solely actually involves life when there’s a reside viewers. This forces individuals out of their particular person bubbles; it’s a must to have interaction with the communal response to the efficiency.

Moreover interval instrument ensemble, Peter additionally works with trendy orchestras, and he’s conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Mozart in December 2025. Regardless of the model of devices, Peter feels that the viewers must really feel the rhetorical facet of the music. Working with trendy devices, he has to make use of a special language to carry the music alive to the musicians. It’s a case of carrying your data flippantly and discovering the suitable simile, the suitable picture and one instance he makes use of refers to Eighties cartoons.

Peter made his debut with Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco in March 2025 when he performed them in Handel’s Alceste. The orchestra was based over 40 years in the past, and he finds it fascinating to go so far-off from dwelling, after which meet individuals who studied in the identical locations. The orchestra’s founders all studied in The Hague; they’re at dwelling each in Handel and in French Baroque, and Peter might be working with that in his programmes with them, however taking issues to the following degree. The musicians are a mixture of founders and youthful gamers, a mixture of expertise and mentoring younger musicians. He feedback that there’s something concerning the air and the sunshine there, with individuals hungry for Baroque music but in a spot so trendy.

For a lot of his early profession, Peter was identified primarily as a bassoonist. He nonetheless holds onto the instrument a tiny bit. He teaches on the Royal Academy of Music and has 9 devoted college students. He loves instructing and finds that it helps to sharpen your instruments as it’s a must to clarify issues.

Peter harks again to the Nineteen Sixties, when in each the Early Music motion and in modern music, musicians had been ready to do issues and never be preferred. He feels that there’s nonetheless scope to shake issues up in the same means in historic efficiency observe as we speak, to do funky experimental issues, however funding is tough.

On the finish of our two hours, our discuss moved on to the nineteenth century. Peter does some work with the modern-day successor to the Meinigen Hofkapelle with whom Brahms labored quite a bit (and the place Mühlfeld, the clarinettist who impressed Brahms, labored). Peter produced an intriguing citation from Brahms, who mentioned that vibrato was for wind gamers however not strings!

Handel: Rodelinda – Garsington Opera, The English Live performance, Peter Whelan

Handel: Alexander’s Feast – Irish Baroque Ensemble, Peter Whelan

• 14 August – Kilkenny Arts Competition
• 15 August – Dublin HandelFest
• 30 August – BBC Proms
• 31 August – Snape Maltings

Grieg, Handel, Telemann – Det Norske Blåseensemble, Peter Whelan

• 18 September – Fredrikshald Theater, Norway
• 19 September – Universitets Aula, Oslo, Norway

Bach: Mass in B Minor – Irish Baroque Ensemble, Peter Whelan

• 1 November – Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Mozart Matinee: Serenade KV 320 ‘Posthorn’, interspersed with arias from Mitridate, La clemenza di Tito, Così fan tutte and The Marriage of Figaro.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Peter Whelan, Tara Erraught

• 17 December – St Andrews
• 18 December – Edinburgh
• 19 December – Glasgow