This has to be one of the most bizarre pieces ever written. Based on the now debunked Old Testament story of the flight of the Israelites from Egypt and the destruction of the Pharaoh’s army with the parting of the Red Sea, it is inherently theatrical in so many respects, yet it clearly belongs in the church or concert hall as an oratorio.

Madeleine Easton

Performances are rare indeed – I can’t recall experiencing it before – mostly because of the extended role of the chorus. It is indeed odd for the chorus to carry the role of narrator in an oratorio. 26 of the 39 numbers in this score are assigned to the chorus, 18 of these for double chorus. The soloists, six of these in the present performance, are relegated to secondary status: three duets, four recitatives and five arias (much lower than, say, Messiah, which premiered two years later, in 1741).

The reason is simple, conductor and festival director Roland Peelman explains in his customary lucid and thought-provoking way. The real protagonist in this work is not the figure of Moses we associate with, say, Schoenberg’s opera Moses und Aron (only...