Paul Goodwin

Athalia, first performed in Oxford in 1733 was enthusiastically received, bar the comment by a crusty academic complaining of ‘Handel and (his lowsy Crew) a great number of forreign fidlers’. All current recordings are of this version, perhaps explaining why Paul Goodwin chose Handel’s London revival from 1735.

Rewritten with enhanced regal bravado for the coronation of George II, Handel's 1727 opera of Richard the Lionheart is a rarely heard but rewarding enterprise. Goodwin conducts a fervent Basel Chamber Orchestra in this new scholarly version, fully exploiting the dramatic twists of the King's quest to reclaim his abducted fiancée, Constanza. Amid much nice character-building from the decent cast, Nuria Rial enjoys Constanza's luxuriant lines, while Lawrence Zazzo revels as the Lionheart. Riccardo's Act III revenge aria is truly ominous, furiously driven by Goodwin and some innovative brass writing.

Paul Goodwin’s A Christmas Collection (his debut disc with the Academy of Ancient Music) offers an anthology of Schütz’s shorter dialogues and motets by way of an alternative to the composer’s own Christmas Oratorio. Anyone who has ever endured that drily austere work will be pleasantly surprised by the rich textures and vocal expressivity of much of the music here, and by the dramatic wit, say, of the little Annunciation scene, ‘Sei gegrüsset Maria’, for male alto Angel and soprano Mary, in which the mother-to-be can’t help interrupting her heavenly visitor, first in sheer amazement, then in her eagerness to confirm her unblemished virgin state.

The circumstances under which Mozart started to write uncompleted Singspiel Zaïde, some time in 1779 or 1780 in Salzburg, are not clear. It may have been in an effort to get a hearing at the new German Theater in Vienna, but by 1781 he realized that a serious opera of this kind was not suitable, given the Viennese preference for comedy. He then abandoned the project, and it was not staged until 1866 in an adaptation by Gollmick, with an Overture and closing section by Johann Anton Andrè. Further adaptations followed, but the version presented here consists only of the music Mozart wrote, adding up to about 80 percent of what the completed opera might have contained.

Of the program’s seven concertos, only two—one by each composer—are conventional solo concertos. Albinoni, who is credited with inventing the genre, actually wrote as many double concertos as solo concertos; two of them are included on the disc, along with a concerto grosso scored for an unlikely combination of five winds and continuo. Vivaldi, who refined Albinoni’s concept, is represented by a brace of concertos for pairs of oboes and clarinets. Therein lies the fun of this marvelous and unexpected release.

The twenty sonatas on this recording show Handel writing for the professional musicians of his London opera orchestra; they demand considerable skill and stamina both from the soloist and the continuo. Prominent bass parts give the sonatas a contrapuntal strength and vitality, and Handel keeps the elements of display and purely musical argument in admirable balance in these works. For this reason, they are among the most attractive Baroque solo sonatas and deserve their lasting popularity.

This recording features concertos for oboe and its alto cousin, oboe d'amore, by Bach and Telemann. The Bach concertos are reconstructed from published harpsichord concertos that Bach is believed to have originally written for oboe and oboe d'amore. The Telemann concertos for these instruments exist in manuscript form.

Three attractive and lively concertos by two exact 18th-century contemporaries (they were both born in 1739) the Viennese Dittersdorf and the Bohemian Vanhal who on at least one occasion played string quartets with Mozart and Haydn. (Haydn and Dittersdorf played violins; Mozart played viola; Vanhal the cello.) This seems to be the only recorded pairing of the two Dittersdorf concertos.

For me this reading of the Trumpet Concerto is as close to ideal as possible. Bennett and Pinnock find a balance in this music that other interpreters invariably distort, one way or another. Maurice Andre, for all his attractive tone and phrasing, is unidiomatic as he tends to make these three movements into concert aria showpieces; Herseth and Solti, with the powerhouse Chicago Symphony, turn it into Mahler-lite; Marsalis and Leppard are overstated, the orchestral texture is opaque, and Marsalis for his part doesn't grasp the architecture of this music, distracted as he is by his concern to demonstrate his considerable virtuosity…

The London Oboe Band have been around since the early 1980s yet this, remarkably, is their first recording. I dare say that ten years ago an ensemble of these potentially troublesome baroque wind instruments might not have been the happiest sound imaginable, but things have come a long way since then, and there is really no faulting the standard of playing on this disc. Led by one of the best baroque oboists around, the band plays with consistently accurate intonation, good blending and refinement of sound. Every one of their instruments is a modern copy, and if that means that the sheer exotic colouring of some of those wonderful old oboes is missing, the benefits in reliability are obvious right from the first notes.