This coupling of Handel favourites is easily as recommendable
as the two-disc set of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos from the
same forces I reviewed recently. The playing is equally accomplished,
the recording equally fine and the booklet equally uninformative. Let’s
start there, with the excellent essay by Julian Haylock. He gives lots
of interesting information about the composer and his career, carefully
setting the Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks
in context, but there is nothing in way of descriptive notes about
the music itself. There is a track listing, but apart from a couple
of photographs, no information about the artists nor the circumstances
of the recording. And nothing at all for those who can’t read English.
As for the performances, these too are very similar
in approach to the Brandenburg set. Tafelmusik, under their director,
Jeanne Lamon, are an extremely accomplished ensemble from Canada who
need not fear comparison with the best of other groups. In these performances
the tempi chosen seem to me near-ideal: in general the music is taken
quickly, but there is no feeling of being hurried, either from a player’s
or a listener’s point of view, which is refreshing when so much of the
period performance movement, even today, seems bound up with rapid tempi.
In only one or two of the slower pieces, perhaps, the music might have
been given a little more time to breathe – the well-known Air
from the Water Music, for example – but on the whole the tempi,
so important in Baroque music, and so difficult, demonstrate both care
and common sense. The playing of the group is outstanding, extremely
sonorous when playing together and with all the virtuosity required
when individual players are featured. The horn playing is perhaps particularly
impressive. The two works are given complete, and all the most famous
set pieces come off very well. All in all a most recommendable disc
at a bargain price.
I was less troubled here by the lack of a strongly
identifiable personality in the playing than I was when I heard the
companion Bach disc, but listening to other performances I started to
wonder again. Raymond Leppard’s reading with the English Chamber Orchestra,
last available on Eloquence, is of course played on modern instruments,
and direct comparisons are therefore not really valid. All the same,
the music seems to have more purpose here, it’s raison-d’être
more clearly defined. It sounds more mellifluous, of course, which will
be a point scored against it for many listeners. A totally different
approach is that of the Catalan Jordi Savall with his group Le Concert
des Nations on Auvidis Fontalis. There is a wildness here which is as
different from Tafelmusik as it is from Leppard, and the sheer sound
of the group – braying horns and all – is perhaps more historically
accurate, given the circumstances of the first performances. The playing
is certainly less polished than in either of the other two versions,
but what it lacks in refinement – and one shouldn’t make too much of
this – it more than makes up for in fire. Listeners seeking something
closer to perfection will be happier with Tafelmusik, I think. In any
event both Leppard and Savall in their different ways generate more
cumulative excitement in the Fireworks Music overture than Tafelmusik
manages, which is one of the reasons why I ultimately prefer them both
to this nonetheless excellent reissue.
William Hedley
Tafelmusic/Jeanne Lamon