Handel: Solo Sonatas for Recorder, Violin, Transverse Flute, Oboe, and Viola da Gamba. Ganassi Consort (Cordula Breuer, transverse flute and recorder; Eberhard Zummach, Baroque oboe and recorder; Christina Kyprianides, viola da gamba and Baroque violoncello; Joachim Vogelsänger, harpsichord); Anne Röhrig, Baroque violin. MDG Preziosa. $49.99 (2 CDs).
Vivaldi: Bassoon Concertos, Volume VI—RV 402, 466, 468/399, 478, 482/406, 487, and 501. Sergio Azzolini, bassoon and conducting L’Onda Armonica. Naïve. $16.99.
Although modern audiences know Handel almost entirely through his larger-scale creations, from Messiah to the Royal Fireworks Music, Water Music, and dozens of Italian operas and English-language choral works, a great deal of his musical production was for far more intimate forces – including several dozen works for solo instrument and continuo. The exact number of these sonatas is uncertain – some are undoubtedly lost, and because of Handel’s popularity, some works by others were printed under his name. The exact instrumentation is uncertain, too: Baroque composers were far less assiduous in specifying instrumentation, often letting the range of a work speak for itself to performers – a matter complicated by overlapping ranges, but allowing music to be played by whatever suitable instruments were available. Handel’s well-known (although scarcely unique) propensity for reusing movements and parts of movements in multiple guises helps stamp some sonatas as his but does little to uncomplicate the matter of how to play them. But the good thing about all this is that if there are no obviously right answers, neither are there any decidedly wrong ones if performers use historically correct instrumentation and performance practices. And that is just what the Ganassi Consort and guest artist Anne Röhrig did when recording 15 Handel solo sonatas in 1990 – performances now re-released on a very fine-sounding two-CD set from MDG Preziosa. The Handel catalog (HWV) numbers help keep things orderly but bear no information about the works’ dates of composition, which are unknown with any specificity but range from the 1720s to about 1750 and thus cover a great deal of his compositional life. There are three sonatas here for oboe (HWV 357, 363a and 366); two for transverse flute (HWV 367b and 378); six for recorder (HWV 358, 360, 362, 365, 369 and 377); three for violin (HWV 359a, 361 and 371); and one for viola da gamba (HWV 364b). The “a” and “b” designations indicate known variants – the viola da gamba sonata, for example, draws from a violin sonata, HWV 364a, within whose autograph Handel wrote out an octave-lower alternative that he designated for the larger instrument. But for all the confusions and complications of origin and specificity, the things that all these sonatas have in common are an easy grace, comparatively modest performance requirements that in no way make the works less charming to play or hear, and a firm and careful stylistic integrity that sets them firmly in Baroque times while leaving room for Handel’s special brand of creativity. Many of the sonatas are four-movement ones grouping two two-movement (slow/fast) subsections, but some have other designs, such as the suitelike HWV 363a in five movements and HWV 367b in seven. Six of the 15 are in minor keys and accordingly offer a slight degree of melancholy or thoughtfulness without, however, any particularly deep emotion being called for or needed. Echoes of other music emerge from time to time – the “hornpipe” from the Water Music in HWV 367b, for example – and Handel’s easily free-flowing melodic and harmonic explorations are everywhere apparent. The use of period instruments or carefully constructed reproductions, and the performers’ careful attention to stylistic niceties, make this recording one to cherish for lovers of smaller-scale Baroque music in general and less-known Handel in particular.
It has taken five years for the ever-expanding Vivaldi Edition on Naïve to complete its survey of the composer’s three dozen or so bassoon concertos, as performed by Sergio Azzolini and L’Onda Armonica: the sixth and final volume has now appeared, with the fifth having come out back in 2021. As with Handel’s solo-instrument sonatas, the exact number of Vivaldi’s for bassoon is impossible to pin down, and this recording actually manages to complicate matters a bit further. It includes four complete bassoon concertos, RV 466, 478, 487 and 501, then adds newly completed concertos that exist in only partial form: the two movements of RV 468 get an adaptation of the finale of the cello concerto RV 399 added to them, while the single surviving movement of RV 482 gets two movements from the cello concerto RV 406. And lest there be any doubt about Azzolini’s enthusiasm for this music – and Vivaldi’s penchant for writing for solo instruments with a rich lower register – there is Azzolini’s own version of the cello concerto RV 402 played here with the bassoon as solo. If one chooses to count all the works here as bassoon concertos, then there are 40 in all; but if the number is arguable, the performance quality is not. Azzolini’s playing and conducting are first-rate throughout, and L’Onda Armonica is a wonderful string ensemble that shows itself to be assured and historically informed in all these works. As in the earlier releases of Vivaldi’s bassoon concertos, it is enjoyable to hear the extent to which bassoon and strings are forthrightly playful from time to time, showing that even serious music-making can be a great deal of fun for performers and audiences alike. Yet the bassoon is not solely an instrument “for fun” in Vivaldi, as it became for some composers in later years: Vivaldi considers it a fully capable woodwind whose ability to amuse is a bonus and just one element of its charm. The concertos also give it plenty of chances to express lyricism, drama and a degree of emotional intensity – further evidence, if there can be any doubt now that the Vivaldi Edition has reached Volume 76 with this release, that Vivaldi thoroughly understood and thoroughly explored every instrument for which he wrote (including the human voice), and that this long-running series is doing an enormous service to his oeuvre by demonstrating, time and again, just how varied and skillfully constructed all his musical explorations were, whether on a larger scale or a more-modest one.
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