Search - George Frideric Handel, Linde Consort, Hans-Martin Linde :: Handel: Concerti Grossi, Op. 3

Not wholly satisfactory

Leslie Richford | Selsingen, Lower Saxony | 11/09/2004

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Handel's Opus 3 had a checkered history right from the start: it was not actually published by Handel himself but by an enterprising music publisher who had collected various orchestral pieces purported to be by Handel and himself put them together as so-called 'concerti grossi' in order to boost sales. In fact, most of the pieces gathered here are written for oboes and bassoon as well as for strings, and in the eighteenth century the pieces were often referred to as Handel's 'oboe concertos'. After they appeared, Handel got wind of what was going on and forced the publisher to withdraw one of the concertos that was not by him at all; he replaced it with the current no. 4 which uses music from previous works, in this case 'Amadigi'. More or less all the other concertos sound like various pieces from Handel's earlier works, so this is altogether quite a hotchpotch. To add to the confusion, Hans-Martin Linde includes here both version of No. 4, i. e. not only Handel's replacement version but also the original spurious concerto.



The playing of the Linde Consort, using period instruments, is more than acceptable, does not however quite match up to the high standards of the English Concert directed by Trevor Pinnock or of the Handel & Haydn Society directed by Christopher Hogwood. The 1984 EMI digital recording seems to have some toothing trouble, and there are several instances of a rather unpleasant electronic humming noise intruding itself on the listener. Add to this the fact that the orchestra is playing in a rather echoey church acoustic and you get a sound that is not totally satisfactory. I recommend going for one of the above-mentioned orchestras or, at budget price, for the English Baroque Soloists directed by John Eliot Gardiner (on Apex)."