Felix Mendelssohn's arrangement of Handel's Acis and Galatea is a curious work. In 1828 Karl Friedrich Zelter asked his former pupil to arrange Handel's Dettingen Te Deum (HWV 283) and Acis and Galatea (HWV 49a) for the Berlin Singakademie, whose focus was the study and performance of music from the past. The Singakademie under Zelter's direction performed Mendelssohn's Acis arrangement on 13 January 1831 while he was away in Italy. Despite numerous opportunities, Mendelssohn himself never performed his arrangement, choosing instead to use excerpts from Mozart's 1788 arrangement of Acis and Galatea for an 1836 Leipzig performance. He wrote to his friend Devrient that, ‘In the score of “Acis” I have found, amongst many good things, several which I could not now endorse, and want to correct before it can pass into other hands, because I consider this matter of re-instrumenting as requiring the utmost conscientiousness’.Footnote ¹ Obviously, Mendelssohn did not think much of his own arrangement, as he tossed it aside rather than revise it.

The work did not surface again until an 1869 London performance. Publication of score and parts the following year, however, did not spur further performances, as Mozart's arrangement continued to be favoured. Peter Ward Jones's excellent liner notes to this CD describe Mendelssohn's score as a ‘fairly hurried affair in which he called upon the assistance of two copyists’, as the young composer had seemingly more important things on his mind. Indeed, his sister Fanny wrote on 27 December 1828 that Felix ‘has many different projects before him, and is arranging for the Academy Handel's cantata Acis and Galatea, in return for which the Academy will sing for him and Devrient the Passion, to be performed during the winter for a charitable cause’.Footnote ²

As Mendelssohn's later arrangements of Handel oratorios show, the composer would eventually adopt a ‘historically informed’ approach to his presentations of early music, rejecting the modernizing tendencies of his youthful arrangement of Acis and Galatea, which ‘updates’ Handel for nineteenth-century ears. Is there any reason to dig up this hastily composed, subsequently rejected work of a teenaged Mendelssohn? In 2008, the Handel Society of Göttingen and Carus-Verlag decided that it was indeed a worthy undertaking. In time for the Mendelssohn and Handel anniversaries in 2009, Carus published a modern edition of Mendelssohn's Acis and Galatea, offering for the first time also the German translation, authored collaboratively by Felix and Fanny.

Conductor Stephen Darlington recognizes the peculiar nature of this arrangement, when he states in the liner notes that ‘it runs counter to the spirit of our own age to take an iconic work from the past and translate it into a contemporary culture’. But he suggests that this arrangement provides ‘fascinating insight into Mendelssohn's imagination as a composer’, as Acis and Galatea represents Mendelssohn's youthful attempt at contextualizing music of the past by modernizing it.

In conjunction with the new edition, Carus-Verlag also offered a recording of the German version, conducted by Nicholas McGegan.Footnote ³ This commendable and well-received live recording offers a fascinating blend of diverging traditions, such as the inclusion of a continuo part played on a nineteenth-century piano, presumably in an attempt to capture the arrangement's various stylistic strains. Darlington, on the other hand, brings Mendelssohn's arrangement into the twenty-first century; his modern orchestra creates a sound typical of recent recordings of St. Paul or Elijah, for example. Given Mendelssohn's attempt to create an updated, ‘relevant’ Acis and Galatea, Darlington's approach is convincing, especially since the conductor stresses the Oxford connections in his project: ‘Not only are the performers (the Oxford Philomusica and the Choir of Christ Church) central in the musical life of the city, but Mendelssohn's original score is here in the Bodleian Library’. Unfortunately, Darlington muddies the waters somewhat when he writes that he ‘set out to view this score through the lens of the early 19th century’, which is true of Mendelssohn's compositional approach but not of the recording's twenty-first-century sound.

It is an absolute delight to have this obscure arrangement recorded by such outstanding performing groups and soloists, as the sound of the orchestra, chorus and soloists is refined and perfectly balanced. Seeing Mendelssohn's detailed and insightful musical contextualization in the score is fascinating, but hearing the resulting transformation is a revelation. The sustained string chords in the recitatives and the subtle inflections of all three soloists immediately bring to mind Mendelssohn's St. Paul, as Handel's influence on Mendelssohn's later compositions becomes evident. Mendelssohn's most obvious and effective changes are found in the da capo arias. Each aria was carefully considered, and adjustments to form and structure were made on an individual basis. In ‘Shepherd, What Art Thou Pursuing’ and ‘Love Sounds th'Alarm’, for example, added string accompaniment to the B section unifies the arias. In ‘Love in Her Eyes Sits Playing’, ‘Cease to Beauty to Be Suing’ and ‘Consider, Fond Shepherd’ on the other hand, Mendelssohn cut the B section to move along the drama. In ‘Hush, Ye Pretty Warbling Choir’, ‘Where Shall I Seek the Charming Fair?’, ‘Happy We’ and ‘Love Sound th'Alarm’ Mendelssohn shortened or cut the da capo section. He was also deliberate in his orchestration. While he stayed mostly close to Handel's musical text, he made a few daring changes. Two of the most drastic recompositions are the simplified accompanimental figurations in ‘Hush, Ye Pretty Warbling Choir’ and the much more expressive solo cello line in ‘Must I My Acis Still Bemoan’. This recording captures Mendelssohn's agenda of modernization very well.

One of the interesting features of Acis and Galatea is the contrast between the pastoral first part and the dramatic second. Unfortunately, Darlington misses the mark in some of the most dramatic numbers, as his second part continues to emphasize beauty and refinement instead of fury and harshness. The consistently slow tempos in the arias squelch the dramatic intensity. The refined orchestral sounds, so effective in the pastoral setting of the first part, become a liability in ‘Love Sound th'Alarm’, where the trumpets are too legato and the timpani too soft, and in ‘The Flock Shall Leave the Mountains’, which offers timid pizzicatos. Darlington's lyric interpretation grows more at odds with Mendelssohn's (and Handel's) intentions as the second part continues. Mendelssohn's masterfully orchestrated transition from ‘The Flocks Shall Leave the Mountains’ into the ensuing recitative lacks punch and direction. The jarring musical contrast between the chorus and Galatea in ‘Must I My Acis Still Bemoan’ is almost non-existent in the all-too-beautiful homogenous sound. The bland articulation and slow tempo of the final movement do not offer the climactic closing Mendelssohn had in mind. What Darlington gained in refinement and sheer beauty of sound, he lost in excitement and dramatic action.

Despite some of these reservations, Darlington and his ensembles have undertaken an important project in reviving and recording this obscure work, and ignoring Mendelssohn's early rejection of it. After all, Mendelssohn also tried to suppress performances of his ‘Italian’ Symphony, and the musical world has judiciously ignored those efforts. Mendelssohn's youthful exuberance and imagination creates a sparkling transformation of one of Handel's most popular works. Thanks to Darlington's masterful recording, we can all experience a fascinating piece of music history.