Handel wrote Samson immediately after The Messiah, and it proved the most successful oratorio of his lifetime. It is less certain, but still likely, that Let the bright seraphim was conceived for a female voice; as with his Ode for Queen Anne, Handel used a celebratory solo trumpet to echo the voice.

from notes by Shirley Apthorp © 2016

This jubilant ‘air and chorus’ concludes Handel’s oratorio Samson, written in 1742—immediately after Messiah—to a text reworked from Milton’s Samson Agonistes. It quickly became one of Handel’s most often-performed works, and was revised several times by the composer, who added the final chorus Let their celestial concerts all unite only as an inspired afterthought. This chorus, on its own, was heard at the wedding of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips in 1973, but was not paired with Let the bright seraphim (which is intended to lead into it without a break) until the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1981, where Dame Kiri Te Kanawa’s performance, duetting with trumpeter John Wallace, made a memorable impression.

from notes by Collegium Records © 2012

After Deidamia was premièred at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre on 10 January 1741 Handel abandoned Italian opera entirely, instead concentrating almost exclusively for the rest of his career on developing annual concert series of English oratorio-style works. Handel’s 1743 Lenten oratorio series at Covent Garden began with the première of Samson, the second of his two great settings of Milton, which he had actually begun before his departure to give a series of subscription concerts in Dublin in 1742 (this series had included the first performance of Messiah). The libretto was based on Milton’s Samson Agonistes—a closet drama developed from the biblical story of Samson and Delilah—and the librettist Newburgh Hamilton also drew extensively from at least fifteen other Milton poems; the radiant portrayal of sunrise in stanza XXVI of the Christmas ode On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity provided the basis for the blinded Samson’s final air, exquisitely depicting his reconciliation with God and his newfound humility and serenity.

from notes by Ian Page © 2016