Judas Maccabaeus, one of the most popular (and lucrative) oratorios of Handel's career, in the first new complete recording for 15 years, marking the 5th anniversary of the Ambronay label and from the 30th year of the Festival. Composed to celebrate an English victory, Judas Maccabaeus, combines celebration and scenes of hope, national aspiration and vocal jubilation. This sumptuous oratorio, packed full of ‘patriotic hits’, is given here a complete recording which incorporates the artistic and musicological developments of the past 15 years. Leonardo García Alarcón invests this new score with an abundance of delicate and generous emotion, and a very Italian baroque voice. This live double album marks the beginning of a promising new partnership between the Namur Chamber Choir, Ambronay and the young Argentinian conductor with a "breathtaking" talent (Télérama).

“To imagine a German musician surrounded by Italian soloists, an English choir and French dance musicians, in order to celebrate freedom through that of the Jewish people, is a real pleasure for the soul. This richness, born out of diversity, has led to an artistic result which is neither uniform nor homogenous, but deeply baroque; the baroque being above all the art of the confrontation of cultures, the richness of variatio and the exploration of contradictory and opposing modes of expression.” Leonardo García Alarcón