From Linn Records Recorded at the National Centre for Early Music, York, 3rd-4th June 2003 A second solo album and a second Gramophone "Editor's Choice" award. Widely acclaimed as a benchmark recording. "I can't for the life of me imagine how this glorious recording could be bettered." -BBC Music Magazine George Frideric Handel - Recorder Sonatas: "The six recorder sonatas were composed in London, during the period 1724 - 1726, when Handel was enjoying a prolific period and huge success. He was producing a feast of grand Italian operas - Giulio Cesare (1724) Rodelinda (1725), Scipione (1726) to name but a few - for his company The Royal Academy of Music. He was writing florid show-stopping arias for his star singers and producing glowing orchestral scores ripe with the fruits of his musical imagination. With his creative juices flowing, even the humble recorder (which had been the instrument of choice for the gentleman amateur in England since the end of the previous century) received a collection of sonatas lovingly crafted by a composer at the height of his powers. Many of Handel's large scale operatic and orchestral works call upon the recorder (or pair of recorders) to play for a few choice moments, usually to represent the pastoral idyll, matters spiritual or during a love scene. The oboists or flautists in the band would have been called upon to pick up a recorder for the relevant aria or movement. Indeed they would have been expected to be more than proficient on perhaps two or three wind instruments. It is not difficult to imagine that one of these players - the leading concert performers of their day - may have asked for, or been given these sonatas to perform in the intervals of theatre or operatic performances or in one of the new concert venues that were springing up in London. The recorder sonatas are a distillation of many of Handel's favourite melodic and rhetorical devices. As a master craftsman he was able to take ideas from large-scale works and recreate elements of oratorio, concerto, operatic aria and orchestral suites in perfectly crafted pocket book form. It is perhaps not surprising then, that he should use these particular pieces as models to teach figured bass to Princess Anne (daughter of George II) and then later to John Christopher Smith, the son of his copyist. It is because of these lessons that we have Handel's fair copies with meticulously figured bass parts for the A minor, F major, C major and G minor sonatas to work from. In matters of ornamentation our aim was of course to enhance, not obscure the musical language and to somehow (within the ‘snapshot' form of the CD recording) leave our individual imprint upon the ‘elegant sufficiency' of Handel's melodies and to show our enjoyment and appreciation of his music." - Pamela Thorby TRACKS: 1. Sonata in D minor HWV 367a - Largo 2. Vivace 3. Furioso 4. Adagio 5. Alla breve 6. untitled 7. a tempo di menuet 8. Sonata in B flat major HWV 377 - untitled 9. adagio 10. allegro 11. Sonata in C major HWV 365 - larghetto 12. allegro 13. larghetto 14. a tempo di gavotta 15. allegro 16. Harpsichord Suite in E major HWV 430 - Prelude 17. Allemande 18. Courante 19. Air with Doubles 20. Sonata in F major HWV 369 - grave 21. Allegro 22. Alla Siciliana 23. Allegro 24. Sonata in A minor HWV 362 - larghetto 25. Allegro 26. Adagio 27. Allegro 28. Sonata in G minor HWV HWV 360 - larghetto 29. Andante 30. Adagio 31. Presto Philip Hobbs - Producer and Engineer Pamela Thorby - Recorder Frederick Morgan - Alto Recorder after originals by Bressan and Stanesby Jr Joel Katzman - Harpsichord - Amsterdam 1991 (after Ruckers, 1638) Peter Collins - Chamber Organ - 1995 Vallotti-Young - Temperament The SACD layer is both 5.1 channel and 2-channel |
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