Federico Guglielmo - Handel: Water Music, Music for the Royal Fireworks (2008)

Few pieces of music have been recorded more often than the Water Music, but this disc offers a genuinely fresh interpretation. Historical-instrument recordings of Handel (or, as this German release has it, Händel) have mostly been the province of English ensembles, but here the Italian group L'Arte dell'Arco (they're from Padua) under leader/violinist Frederico Guglielmo shows that the innovations applied to Vivaldi and Corelli by young Italian musicians can be just as effective in Handel's case. Many things in the recording are new, and the listener who knows the Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music well may find it quite a shock. It's a worthwhile shake-up to one's concept of the music, though. The ordering of the pieces in the Water Music is not the usual one, according instead with a suggestion by Christopher Hogwood that they should be arranged by key. Tempos are often quite fast, with brisk, clipped articulation (sample the Allegro section in the very first track), and Guglielmo's violin parts feature plenty of ornamentation. The hallmark of the Italian style, which might be described as the honing of each Baroque texture to a fine point, works spectacularly well in Handel's short dances once you get into the mood. The two Country Dances (tracks 20 and 21) are genuinely bumptious and rustic, the various movements involving brasses set the natural instruments of the group off in such a way as to re-create a sense of real surprise. The overall effect for these outdoor works, written for King George I, is to suggest a panorama of scenes, such as George might have witnessed on the boat trip for which the music was commissioned, as the king passed varied scenes on the shore. Sample one of the broader movements, such as "La Paix" in the Music for the Royal Fireworks, to hear exactly what you're getting into here, and proceed forward if you're at all intrigued.