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Conductor Paul McCreesh is a major figure in London's early music scene, having founded the Gabrieli Consort and Players. He has been increasingly active as a conductor of modern-instrument ensembles as well.

McCreesh was born on May 24, 1960, in London. He attended Manchester University, studying cello performance and musicology, but he wasted no time forming ensembles to realize his musical visions, including a chamber choir and a historical-instrument group. The latter evolved into the Gabrieli Consort and Players, which McCreesh established in 1982 at age 22. In its focus on late Renaissance ensemble music, at the time largely the focus of modern brass quintets only, the group was unusual. McCreesh also led performances of music forward to the High Baroque, including major works by Monteverdi, Schütz, Handel, and Bach. McCreesh's recording career began in the 1980s, and in 1990, McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort made their recording debut with the album A Venetian Coronation 1595. The group was signed to the major Deutsche Grammophon label and its Archiv early music imprint in 1993, releasing a recording of the Michael Praetorius Christmas Mass the following year. The Consort also backed several major operatic productions beginning in the 1990s.

McCreesh and his group toured widely and were increasingly frequent guests at European festivals, including two -- the Brinkburn Summer Music Festival in Britain and Cantans Festival in Wroclaw, Poland -- that he established himself. He directed the latter event from 2006 to 2012, and in 2013, he assumed his first major position with a modern-instrument group, the Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon. He has also maintained ongoing collaborations with the Basel Chamber Orchestra in Switzerland and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra in Minnesota. His guest-conducting appearances include those with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and the Sydney Symphony. Since 2010, he has also recorded for Signum Classics, issuing a recording of the Berlioz Requiem with the Wroclaw Philharmonic that year. His performances and recordings of 19th century music have been influenced by historical-performance principles. In 2018, he and the Gabrieli Consort issued the album A Rose Magnificat on Signum Classics. In 2019 and 2020, the same forces issued a pair of recordings of semi-operas by Henry Purcell. After a pandemic pause, McCreesh returned in 2024 on Signum Classics with a bulked-up Gabrieli Consort and Polish vocalists for a recording of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius. ~ James Manheim

Most music lovers have encountered George Frederick Handel through holiday-time renditions of the Messiah's "Hallelujah" chorus. And many of them know and love that oratorio on Christ's life, death, and resurrection, as well as a few other greatest hits like the orchestral Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music, and perhaps bits of Judas Maccabeus or one of the other English oratorios. Yet his operas, for which he was widely known in his own time, are the province mainly of specialists in Baroque music, and the events of his life, even though they reflected some of the most important musical issues of the day, have never become as familiar as the careers of Bach or Mozart. Perhaps the single word that best describes his life and music is "cosmopolitan": he was a German composer, trained in Italy, who spent most of his life in England.

Handel was born in the German city of Halle on February 23, 1685. His father noted but did not nurture his musical talent, and he had to sneak a small keyboard instrument into his attic to practice. As a child he studied music with Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, organist at the Liebfrauenkirche, and for a time he seemed destined for a career as a church organist himself. After studying law briefly at the University of Halle, Handel began serving as organist on March 13, 1702, at the Domkirche there. Dissatisfied, he took a post as violinist in the Hamburg opera orchestra in 1703, and his frustration with musically provincial northern Germany was perhaps shown when he fought a duel the following year with the composer Mattheson over the accompaniment to one of Mattheson's operas. In 1706 Handel took off for Italy, then the font of operatic innovation, and mastered contemporary trends in Italian opera seria. He returned to Germany to become court composer in Hannover, whose rulers were linked by family ties with the British throne; his patron there, the Elector of Hannover, became King George I of England. English audiences took to his 1711 opera Rinaldo, and several years later Handel jumped at the chance to move to England permanently. He impressed King George early on with the Water Music of 1716, written as entertainment for a royal boat outing. Much of his keyboard music, including the suite with the famous melody "The Harmonious Blacksmith" dates from just before his going to Italy and his first decade in England. For 18 months, between 1717 and 1719, Handel was house composer to the Duke of Chandos, for whom he composed the 11 Chandos Anthems for chorus and string orchestra. He also founded the Royal Academy of Music, a new opera company in London, with the support of the Duke and other patrons. Through the 1720s Handel composed Italian operatic masterpieces for London stages: Ottone, Serse (Xerxes), and other works often based on classical stories. His popularity was dented, though, by new English-language works of a less formal character, and in the 1730s and 1740s, after the Academy failed, Handel turned to the oratorio, a grand form that attracted England's new middle-class audiences. Not only Messiah but also Israel in Egypt, Samson, Saul, and many other works established him as a venerated elder of English music. The oratorios displayed to maximum effect Handel's melodic gift and the sense of timing he brought to big choral numbers. Among the most popular of all the oratorios was Judas Maccabeus, composed in 32 days in 1746. His Concerti grossi, Op. 6, and organ concertos also appeared in the same period. In 1737, Handel suffered a stroke, which caused both temporary paralysis in his right arm and some loss of his mental faculties, but he recovered sufficiently to carry on most normal activity. He was urged to write an autobiography, but never did. Blind in old age, he continued to compose. He died in London on April 14, 1759. More than 3,000 mourners were present for the funeral of the famous composer. He was buried at Westminster Abbey and received full state honors. Beethoven thought Handel the greatest of all his predecessors; he once said, "I would bare my head and kneel at his grave." ~ TiVo Staff