Handel Recorder Sonatas Chamber Linn Records

Handel: Recorder Sonatas

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LN 0223

Handel: Recorder Sonatas

Label Catalogue Number:
CKD223

Running Time: 74:03

Release Date: August 2004
Originally recorded in August 2004

Composer
George Frideric Handel

Solo
Richard Egarr

Chamber Chamber
Pamela Thorby

Genre:
Classical

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GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL

Sonata in D minor HWV 367a

Largo

2:14

Vivace

3:09

Furioso

2:00

Adagio

1:20

Alla Breve

1:47

Untitled

2:45

A Tempo di Menuet

1:31

Sonata in B flat Major HWV 377

Untitled

2:12

Adagio

1:20

10.

Allegro

2:33

Sonata in C Major HWV 365

11.

Larghetto I

2:44

12.

Allegro I

2:16

13.

Larghetto II

2:01

14.

A Tempo di Gavotta

2:14

15.

Allegro II

2:21

Harpsichord Suite in E Major HWV 430

16.

Prelude

2:04

17.

Allemande

5:34

18.

Courante

1:55

19.

Air with doubles

4:29

Sonata in F Major HWV 369

20.

Grave

2:28

21.

Allegro

2:24

22.

Alla Siciliana

1:14

23.

Allegro

1:56

Sonata in A minor HWV 362

24.

Larghetto

2:33

25.

Allegro I

2:27

26.

Adagio

2:07

27.

Allegro II

3:23

Sonata in G minor HWV 360

28.

Larghetto

2:18

29.

Andante

3:26

30.

Adagio

0:46

31.

Presto

1:59

Solo: Richard Egarr

Chamber: Pamela Thorby Chamber

About

A second solo album and a second Gramophone ’Editor’s Choice’ award. Widely acclaimed as a benchmark recording.

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.

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Reviews

"... a thoroughly delectable disc..."

Richard Wigmore - Daily Telegraph - 24 July 2004

"An enchanting collection ..."

Gramophone Magazine - Awards Issue - October 2004

"Pamela Thorby’s tone is silvery, alert and superbly recorded. Her intonation is impeccable In all, I can’t for the life of me imagine how this glorious recording could be bettered." *****

George Pratt - BBC Music Magazine - July 2004

"... distinctive and individual readings "

Warwick Cole - International Record Review - June 2004

"The follow-up to Pamela Thorby’s Baroque Concertos disc of 2003 sees this wonderful artist at her very best: relaxed, stylish, unpredictable and distinctive of tone throughout Handel’s six delicious sonatas. Thorby establishes a clear character to each work, from the balmy simplicity of the B flat Sonata to the operatic fire of the A minor, thus squashing any worries about lack of variety. In this she is aided, if not outshone, by her accompanist Richard Egarr: a compelling musician on harpsichord and organ, who can make the spread of a single chord as eloquent as dance." ****

Anna Picard - Independent on Sunday - 2 May 2004

"Musical partners since their Guildhall student days, Pamela Thorby and Richard Egarr are now pre-eminent on their respective instruments. So this is a partnership made in heaven - as are Handel’s six suites for recorder, generally considered the finest in the baroque repertory. Thorby realises all their melodic subtlety and charm, with Egarr throwing in a harpsichord suite (in E major, HWV 430) on top of the most sympathetic accompaniment. Written in 1724-26, when Handel was at the height of his fame, these delightful pieces should have you all blowing the dust off your recorders."

Anthony Holden - The Observer - 18 April 2004

"... Finally, a superb recital of Handel recorder sonatas by Pamela Thorby seems set to become a benchmark. Thorby’s plaintively expressive tone is underpinned by Richard Egarr’s boisterous handling of the harpsichord or organ parts. In addition to the six recorder sonatas, Egarr throws in Handel’s E major solo harpsichord suite with its once-ubiquitous "Harmonious Blacksmith" theme-with-variations finale."

Rob Cowan - The Independent - 19 April 2004

"... the highest level of artistry ..."

Andrew Stewart - Music Week - 13 April 2004

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