Händel: Water Music - Orchestra of St. Luke's, Mackerras

George Frideric Händel
Water Music
Orchestra of St. Luke's, Charles Mackerras
Telarc CD-80279

"The playing and recording are brilliant, the music breathless." -Stereo Review

The closest North American equivalent to the venerable Academy of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields is the Orchestra of St. Luke's in New York. St. Luke's fielded a string section about half the size of St. Martin's for this 1991 recording of the Water Music with Sir Charles Mackerras but managed to sound even lighter than that thanks to the dryish acoustics of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (where the recording was made) and to Mackerras's insistence on snappy articulations. The New Yorkers play with polish and considerable idiomatic fluency, though without the gusto of the best period bands.

Ted Libbey, Amazon.com