Händel: Concerti Grossi Op.3, Sonata a 5 - AAM, Egarr

George Frideric Händel
Concerti Grossi Op.3, Sonata a 5
Academy of Ancient Music, Richard Egarr
Harmonia Mundi HMU807415

Classics Today rating: 10/10

As Richard Egarr points out in his very intelligent notes to this terrific release (in what promises to be a new Handel cycle with the AAM), the Op. 3 Concerti grossi tend to get dismissed as compared with their larger Op. 6 brethren. But that doesn't mean that Handel didn't lavish great care on their composition (or assembly), and the fact that they consist mostly of arrangements or borrowings, as we all know, means nothing where Handel is concerned as a measure of quality. One of the nicest things about these performances is that Egarr makes no effort to homogenize what remains a wildly varied selection of movement types and formal structures. Just the opposite: he presents this music as a riot of color and individualized character.

Here are some of the highlights: Egarr offers the solo flute version of the Third Concerto rather than the more standard alternative for oboe, an excellent choice that both sets off this particular work and provides a welcome contrasting timbre if you are listening continuously. The French Overture opening of Concerto No. 4 really captures that wonderful sense of ceremony that Handel managed better than just about anyone else. Egarr also offers a delightful organ improvisation as the central movement of the Sixth Concerto (surely something belongs between the two that Handel actually wrote), and throughout the set he varies the continuo extremely effectively, nowhere more so than in the strikingly sensual Largo of the Second Concerto. The lively Sonata a 5, from Handel's early days in Italy, makes a fine bonus, and the whole production is superbly engineered and presented with Harmonia Mundi's usual care for every detail of production. It doesn't get any better.

David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Händel: Music for the Royal Fireworks - Mackerras

George Frideric Händel
Music for the Royal Fireworks, Water Music Suite
Wind Ensemble, Pro Arte Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Mackerras
Testament SBT 1253

One of the most famous recordings ever made, and one of the most important, this truly legendary performance of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks belongs in every serious record collection. The brainchild of the young Charles Mackerras--a conductor whose curiosity is exceeded only by his innate musicality--virtually every horn, trumpet, oboe, and bassoon player in London got together for a single night in April 1959, and (so the story goes) fortified with plenty of drink, let loose the musical barrage captured on this CD.

Certainly, as Mackerras himself points out, he would conduct the Overture more quickly today, and to a degree the sonics cloud over the loudest passages, but what fun this still is, and how bold and exciting it all sounds! The couplings, other Handel works largely arranged by Mackerras, also reveal his special affinity for this composer; but it's the Fireworks Music that remains the reason to get this disc. Rarely is it possible in the history of music to be able to point to a specific event and say: "There! This performance changed the way we think about a familiar piece of music." This is one of those times.

David Hurwitz, ClassicalToday.com

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

Händel: Water Music & Fireworks - Le Concert Spirituel

George Frideric Händel
Water Music & Fireworks
Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet
Glossa GCDSA 921616

After half a century of musicological, organological and scientific investigation, the different guidelines we use for interpreting the Baroque repertoire have become very precise. If so, why are we still suspicious of the results of these investigations? It has been the intention of the hundred (!!!) musicians gathered here for the performance of the Water Music and Fireworks suites, in celebration of the 15th anniversary of Le Concert Spirituel, to put into practice, without any concessions, what they know of these early techniques, each one according to his or her field of specialization. [...] The sound is unusual in its colours and its energy; some ears, unaccostumed to meantone temperament, can expect to be surprised. But our queries and intuitions have met with bold answers, transparent and enriching, and that, without a doubt, show respect for thework. - Hervé Niquet

Five years after the initial release of Handel's Water Music and Fireworks suites in the groundbreaking version from Le Concert Spirituel, we are now issuing the original surround master in a newly-designed digipakedition. Listening to a period instrument orchestra (made up of over one hundred players) with historically-informed tuning and with the full energy and sonic details permitted by the SACD format is an experience that no lover of the best baroque music should miss...

Glossamusic.com

Händel: Water Music - The English Concert, Trevor Pinnock

George Frideric Händel
Water Music
The English Concert, Trevor Pinnock
Archiv 410 525-2

Whatever the circumstances were which prompted Handel to write his Water Music, it is highly unlikely that George I ever witnessed performances matching up to this one. Had I been in the monarch's shoes and heard the present version I'd have given Handel anything in the world! Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert have already given us a splendid and satisfying account of Handel's Op. 6 Concerti grossi (Archiv Produktion 2742 002, 11/82). Now they have followed it up with the sparkling performance of the three groups of movements which comprise the Water Music. Tempos are well judged and there is a truly majestic sweep to the opening F major French overture; that gets things off to a fine start but what follows is no less compelling with some notably fine woodwind playing so often the disappointing element in performances on period instruments. 1 liked the tempo or the well-known Air, which felt uncomfortably fast in the recording of the AAM on L'Oiseau-Lyre.

In the D major music it is the brass department which steals the show and in this new version horns and trumpets acquit themselves with distinction. It seems to my ears that Archiv Producktion have achieved a particularly satisfying sound in which all strands of the orchestral texture can be heard with clarity. In this suite the ceremonial atmosphere comes over particularly well with some resonant brass playing complemented with crisply articulated oboes.

The G major pieces are quite different from those in the previous groups, being lighter in tex ture and more closely dance-orientated in character. I find them amongst the most engaging in the Water Music and especially, perhaps, the two little 'country dances' the boisterous character of which Pinnock captures nicely.
This performance is, perhaps, as they say, the one we've been waiting for. Certainly it has already replaced in my affections all others known to me. The digitally-recorded sound is, as I've already said, amongst the most pleasing 1 have heard from Archiv Produktion. Strongly recommended.

N.A., Gramophone.net

J.S. Bach, WTC I & II - S. Richter (live in Innsbruck, 1973)

Thought I had offered this one here before but I can't find it now so probably I didn't ...

It's another older upload that's on the cusp of disappearing unless someone wants it:

Great Legacies of Sviatoslav Richter

J. S. BACH: THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER
BWV 846-893

Recorded live on 7 & 10 August 1973 in Innsbruck (Austria)
Many thanks to DanseDePuck for the original rip!

CPE Bach: The Symphonies for Strings - Trevor Pinnock

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
The Symphonies for Strings
The English Concert, Trevor Pinnock
Archiv 00289 477 5000

. . . the evident delight of the musicians in this music makes for rewarding listening . . .

There are times when C. P. E. Bach's music can seem downright strange, and the great success of Pinnock's performances is that while the oddness is well and truly present, so is an overall sense of direction and purpose. An impressive and fascinating disc.

Record Review / Nigel Simeone, International Record Review (London) / 01. April 2005