Handel: Water Music & Rodrigo Overture
Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, Marc Minkowski
The opening Suite is splendid, from fine blasts of robust natural horns (if played at Whitehall, audible, I'd imagine, in Chelsea)...though the sound is weighty enough to suit the open air,...
Handel: Water Music & Rodrigo Overture
Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, Marc Minkowski
Purchase product
The opening Suite is splendid, from fine blasts of robust natural horns (if played at Whitehall, audible, I'd imagine, in Chelsea)...though the sound is weighty enough to suit the open air,...
About
Following the huge success of their Haydn Symphonies set, Marc Minkowski and his Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble's fifth recording on Naïve is Handel's popular Water Music, commissioned by King George I for a big “river party” on the Thames that took place in July 1717. Minkowski and his band have performed this many times in concerts all over Europe and now they record it for the first time.
Handel’s Water Music was influenced by French, German and Italian music, which explains its lively, colourful, varied, dynamic and dancing character – and its enduring popularity with audiences ever since. This fresh interpretation gathers together the three suites – grouped according to instrumentation and key – that collectively comprise all the Water Music.
To complement the Water Music, Marc Minkowski has chosen to record the ‘Ouverture’ to Rodrigo (an opera recorded in full on Naïve’s sister label, Ambroisie – AM132), composed by Handel for his Italian audience some years before. Everything, in this Florentine suite, seems to foreshadow the London festival!
“This is the finest period instruments ensemble in the world." Independent on Sunday
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
February 2011
The opening Suite is splendid, from fine blasts of robust natural horns (if played at Whitehall, audible, I'd imagine, in Chelsea)...though the sound is weighty enough to suit the open air, his spirited players achieve a lightness of touch, even with 25 strings, and doubled horns and oboes.
March 2011
Minkowski's interpretation has plenty of tautness and verve...the vigour and force of quick movements can be dashing (in both senses of the term)...The most enduring music-making is the slower or gentler movements of the "Suite in G", with Minkowski embracing the lyrical sustained lines wholeheartedly and with emotional warmth.
December 2010
The string playing is richly textured and there is some lovely solo playing, presumably by the leader Thibault Noally...the [brass] tone is raw and penetrating, yet with delicacy when needed and some quite astonishing feats of ornamentation...The performance has excitement, tenderness, wit and drama - all the qualities, in fact, for which we love Handel's music.
2nd January 2011
This is a feast...the performances are outstanding. There is no finer period-instrument orchestra than Minkowski’s...wonderfully fleet-footed strings, ravishing flute and recorder, horns to delight the heart of Squire Weston himself, and all as responsive to Handel’s most delicate fancies as to his Rabelaisian humour.
4th February 2011
The Water Music Suites...are given with all the freshness, exuberance and interpretative discretion that are hallmarks of Les Musiciens du Louvre under Marc Minkowski. Natural horns rasp jubilantly, the strings, while using “historically aware” technique, sound full and lithe, and Minkowski opts for judicious pacing that buoys up the music
