Handel, George F.: Renee Fleming.

Handel, George F.: Renee Fleming (singing arias). Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Harry Bicket. Recorded in 2003, at The Colosseum, Watford, England. Engineering and surround mixing: Neil Hutchinson. 70+ minutes. Decca 475 6186.

Handel wrote 42 operas and 30 oratorios, and the cornerstone of nearly every one of them was the aria. This release highlights the composer's talents over a period of forty years, demonstrating both his development and his very stable musical perspective. Music like this demands the utmost in talent, and in this case, Ms. Fleming does the music full justice. This disc is a serious vocal-music lover's dream come true.

Technically, there is little to fault, with but two minor problem areas. As with the Florez disc reviewed above, there is some background rumble intruding at times (even though this is a completely different hall), but only those with super subwoofers would notice, and even they may not be obnoxiously distracted. Indeed, the rumble (probably a big heater blower down in the basement somewhere) might help to highlight the concert-hall realism inherent in the recording.

As with most of the surround-sound recordings I have auditioned there is only a token amount of true center-channel information and the center feed might as well have not been used at all. (Yep, the SACD surround-sound tracks are basically 4.1 and not 5.1 channels.) In defense of the engineering choice (probably concern involving typical center-speaker quality and positioning), the dominant phantom center is quite stable and well focussed. That center even held up when listened to from off axis somewhat, thanks to the time-intensity tradeoff created by the toed-in arrangement of the Dunlavy Cantata speakers. Notwithstanding the missing center feed, this is a state-of-the-art recording if there ever was one.

The two-channel CD tracks (played on a Pioneer CD/LD player installed in the system) were also excellent, and with some DSP ambiance simulations added by the Yamaha DSP-A1 integrated amp the overall sound was a close quality match for the SACD version. The "hall" DSP settings did add quite a bit of up-front reverb, however, a problem with some of the Yamaha modes when dealing with solo vocal music and orchestral backup. In contrast, there was even better center focus than what the SACD version offered if the DSP choice included a derived center feed, such as what the Yamaha processor's Classical/Opera mode offered. This mode kept the up-front reverb under control.

The high-resolution stereo SACD tracks on the disc (getting to them required going to the set-up menu) also allowed the Yamaha player to apply Dolby Pro Logic II processing. The result was possibly superior in terms of sound quality to all the other playback options. (There is more on this feature in the Yamaha player's review; the DSP-A1 does not have the function.) If you have a regular CD player and a processor with DPL II decoding you would get similar results from those standard PCM tracks. They seemed to be a subjective, per-channel quality match for the high-resolution SACD version, notwithstanding the latter's theoretical advantages.