The Music for the Royal Fireworks (HWV 351) is a wind band suite composed by George Frideric Handel in 1749 under contract of George II of Great Britain for the fireworks in London's Green Park on 27 April 1749. It was to celebrate the end of the War of the Austrian Succession and the signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748.
The Water Music is a collection of orchestral movements, often published as three suites, composed by George Frideric Handel. It premiered on 17 July 1717, in response to King George I's request for a concert on the River Thames.
Jordi Savall's exemplary performance of Handel's Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks is among the finest available on disc: refined and precise, but very big, with blood-stirring grandeur. This is just the kind of extroverted, rousing presentation that best highlights the music's open-air ceremonial function. Savall's Le Concert des Nations is essentially a chamber orchestra with double or triple winds, but the sound he elicits from the group is majestic and surprisingly powerful. The playing is crisp and the rhythmic articulation bracing, but the sound is never brash. In fact, more often than not it is seductively sensual, a heady integration of precision and supple, shapely phrasing. Handel left no authoritative edition of the score of Water Music and it has traditionally been divided into three suites, but Savall reorders the material into two suites, a decision that makes more sense in terms of key relationships and that sounds entirely satisfying.
At times quite sprightly, at other times ponderous not least in its treatment of dotting and though played with the professional efficiency one expects of the ECO, this recording fell short of medal-ranking when it was first issued. During the intervening 16 years even middle-of-the-road performances of the Music for the Royal Fireworks have become more attentive to scholarship and there are now several excellent recordings of the kind available (not to mention others on period instruments) on CD.
Here is another fine performance of the Fireworks Music in its original scoring for nine horns, nine trumpets, 21 oboes, 21 bassoons, three snare drums and three timpani. It makes a grand noise, but just as interesting is the music that conductor Trevor Pinnock has assembled from other Handel works, something the composer himself did, to provide a rich and enjoyable selection of orchestral music that we would ordinarily never hear in this form. Pinnock has had a tendency in the past to sound somewhat stiff in Handel's music, but here he lets his hair down and everyone concerned seems to be having a very good time.
Kevin Mallon leads a Toronto-based, 34-person group of period instrumentalists called the Aradia Ensemble on this new, bargain issue, and it's a terrific, ear-opening show. The music is, above all, joyful, with dance movements galore and plenty of giddy pomp. Mallon has rethought the tempos, almost all of which, he feels, should be quicker than we're accustomed to hearing. If you listen to the Air, the fourth movement to Suite No. 1, you'll be surprised at how good it sounds played without the usual serious "aura" that drags it down. Mallon writes in the accompanying notes that he looked at an 18th-century score for the piece and discovered it was marked "presto".
Sir Neville Marriner thins out the usual ASMF textures and leads vigorous, stately accounts of both the Water Music Suites and the Music for the Royal Fireworks. The playing is snappy, the feeling of dance-inspired animation just right. This is the ideal compilation, presenting both scores complete; and the sound is open, well balanced, and extremely well defined.
Born Caroline Catharina Müller in the Netherlands, she moved with her family to Germany in the late '70s. In 1980, she became a member of the girl quartet Optimal, who issued two singles. During one of the band's concerts in Hamburg, she was approached by songwriter/producer Dieter Bohlen who had just taken the continental charts by storm with his duo Modern Talking…
Among all the recordings of Handel's Water Music, this is for me the most uplifting. Yes, it is on modern instruments. Yes, it was recorded in 1962, but if you can get hold of this on CD you'll find the sound as wonderful or better then any modern recording. August Wenzinger and his orchestra seem to me to have the measure of Handel's music completely. Tempos are just right and you can almost feel the fun these people are having with it.
Herman Rarebell (born November 18, 1949 as Hermann Josef Erbel) is a German musician, best known as the drummer for the band Scorpions from 1977 to 1995, during which time he played on eight studio albums…
Saffire was born in Gothenburg in 2005, the idea was to form a band based on Melodic hard rock and heavy metal of the old school, but giving it a modern touch…