Royal Albert Hall, London
Richard Egarr balanced intensity with reflection, despite cuts to the score, and Allan Clayton was fine and effortless in the title role

‘Whatever is, is right,” we are told in a moment of fatalistic horror at the close of the second act of Jephtha, Handel’s last oratorio, given its first Prom performance in more than 20 years by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Chorus under Richard Egarr. A noble, disquieting examination of man’s response to God’s inscrutable nature, its dark tone and at times troubling emotional depth are widely taken to reflect the fact that Handel’s sight was failing while he worked on the score.

The text overlays Biblical narrative with classical tragedy. Israelite commander Jephtha vows to sacrifice the first living being he sees on returning from battle if God will grant him victory, only to find the victim is his own daughter. It is Euripides’s Iphigenia in Aulis, however, dealing with Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter before the Trojan war, that gives the girl her name, Iphis, and dictates the oratorio’s implacable dramatic structure.