Dutch recorder player Erik Bosgraaf is one of a group of Young Turks giving fresh attention to the Baroque recorder repertory, with often spectacular results. Here he turns to Handel's sonatas for recorder and harpsichord, not, as he argues convincingly in his booklet notes, recorder and continuo. For one thing, printings of the time specified only the two instruments. And for another, there's evidence that Handel used some of these works as teaching pieces, which would have placed the composer himself at the harpsichord. ...
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Dutch recorder player Erik Bosgraaf is one of a group of Young Turks giving fresh attention to the Baroque recorder repertory, with often spectacular results. Here he turns to Handel's sonatas for recorder and harpsichord, not, as he argues convincingly in his booklet notes, recorder and continuo. For one thing, printings of the time specified only the two instruments. And for another, there's evidence that Handel used some of these works as teaching pieces, which would have placed the composer himself at the harpsichord. The keyboard realizations here are unusually vigorous and ornate, and a cello or gamba would have crowded them. The keyboard is almost an equal partner with the recorder. In this respect and in others, this album represents an excellent imaginative reconstruction of what these sonatas might actually have sounded like in Handel's time, based on the contexts in which they might have been used. Bosgraaf presents several possibilities, and the styles aren't totally consistent from one...
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