Recordings of Handel's violin sonatas as a group are rare, perhaps because the canon of authentic ones is difficult to pin down. This album, originally issued in 2003 and rereleased at an attractive budget price by Virgin Classics in 2010, includes the Violin Sonata in A major, HWV 372, and Violin Sonata in F major, HWV 370, in spite of a notation on each sonata in a contemporary copy that reads unambiguously: "NB This is not Mr. Handel's." Both are competent essays in the Italian style Handel brought to Britain, but to ...
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Recordings of Handel's violin sonatas as a group are rare, perhaps because the canon of authentic ones is difficult to pin down. This album, originally issued in 2003 and rereleased at an attractive budget price by Virgin Classics in 2010, includes the Violin Sonata in A major, HWV 372, and Violin Sonata in F major, HWV 370, in spite of a notation on each sonata in a contemporary copy that reads unambiguously: "NB This is not Mr. Handel's." Both are competent essays in the Italian style Handel brought to Britain, but to have the frame of the program, as violinist Hiro Kurosaki does here, is a questionable decision; they aren't on a level with the genuine Handel pieces. For the real thing, sample the Allegro of the Violin Sonata in D major, HWV 371, and observe how the intervals defined in the first few bars of the music very quickly fall into dense manipulation without losing the cheery aspect of the music. Or the splendidly operatic slow movement of the Violin Sonata in A major, HWV 361 (track 15)....
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