The Triumph of Time and Truth

Instruments of Time and Truth is joined by Oxford Consort of Voices and a stellar line-up of soloists for this rare performance of Handel’s eponymous oratorio, both his first and last.

Whether its theme – the need to invest in a higher good rather than in transient beauty – may have resonated with the composer in his final years, we don’t know. What we do know is that the work exudes Handel’s amazing fluency as a young composer, and his ability to recast his music in the light of a lifetime’s experience.

In many ways this oratorio is Handel’s alpha and omega: it first saw the light of day at the very beginning of his career, in Rome in 1708, as Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno. Then, following another Italian version in 1737, towards the end of his life, Handel supervised the expanded 1757 version, now in English, transforming a chamber piece into a fully formed oratorio, boasting chorus and brass, the essential circumstantial trappings of the genre for an English public, then as now.