Customer Reviews

Handel: Keyboard Suites

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If Handel's vocal music is back in favour at present, then his many keyboard suites also have claims for the attention of modern audiences. Personally, I don't welcome a chance to listen to the ways Handel contrived to set two lines of a foreign language to six minutes of music. I delight in listening, however, to how he develops and extends the classic suite items - allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue, adding sometimes other items, and sometimes - and in the Second Suite - omitting all the classic movements. It is not be understood, mind you, that Handel planned and plotted each suite as a whole entity. Almost all of them are gatherings of pieces dating from his early composing years. He published the first eight suites when he was aged 35.

Pianists Sviatoslav Richter and Andrei Gavrilov shared live performances of all of them at a series of concerts given at the Tours Festival, France in 1979. Happily the recordings that derive from these performances are eminently successful, with little or no audible coughing and a life-like if sometimes fierce piano tone. Both pianists "voice" the linear part writing colourfully, in ways not possible when a harpsichord is used. Repeats are observed throughout. Making a belated and rosette-winning appearance on CD, these performances are conveniently spread across two double CD sets. Included in the second set, as a bonus, is a Richter performance good for all time if ever there was one - his 1961 Abbey Road Studio recording of Beethoven's "Tempest" Sonata.

Handel is not frequently played on piano, and authentic music enthusiasts might well point to this recording as an example of "heavy handed" pianism obscuring musical colors composed for harpsichord. However, there is much to enjoy in these strong readings of Handel. Richter was certainly capable of a lighter approach such as Perahia used in his recent recording, but he heard the music differently, and so will you if you allow repeated listening to persuade you of the validity of Richter's approach. His fingerwork is wonderful, and the music, composed by one of the great keyboard artists and composers of the 18th century, is good enough to benefit from this individualistic interpretation by one of the 20th century's half-dozen greatest pianists.

I have never appreciated Handel before I heard Richter play. I started to listen to Handel because of him. This is not a recording to show off Richter's technical brilliance, but he and Gavrilov interpret Handel very well. As usual, I am at a loss of words to describe the good things on planet earth.

This is a live recording from the 1979 Tours Festival, Chateau de Marcilly-sur-Maulne, France. Though there is not much information about this festival in the booklet, it seems that Richter and Gavrilov alternately performed all of the suites at this event.

These performances are simply superb. For anyone studying Handel's Keyboard Suites or collecting Richter and Gavrilov, I consider this recording essential. It is an opportunity to hear Handel's oft-ignored keyboard works performed live. We are lucky to have this recording.

I can pose two reasons why some might not like this:
1. musicians and supporters who are against the use of non-periodic instruments. This is based on fallacious reasoning that can be analogized to playing PACMAN on an old atari since that is the only authentic way to do it. Pure silly posturing
2. People that like a laid back elevator-music style of Baroque. This is predicated on the belief that Baroque by its nature is merely pastoral, tranquil, and delicate/beautiful. Maybe most Baroque can be construed that way but the whole reason that Handel and Bach do not fall into this category is why they are so famous today. This is also why Clementi and Hummel are not as popular as Mozart.

In any regards, this is the best Handel piano music I have ever heard and I am a huge lover of Handel's music (have also played a couple of the suites). Both pianists accent the polyphony and create interest in the music. Richter, as usual, brings intensity and movement in the music. These suites are not a benign collection of Couperin medleys but rather incorporate a fair amount of minor-keyed and tragic melodies. Richter is aware of this and brings it out to the open.
All in all.... outstanding

I adore these recordings which emphasize the improvisational aspect of these works. Not Handel's finest music perhaps but this kind of pianism could persuade you otherwise.The sarabandes are spellbinding in their slowness and the fast dances have an irresistable momentum:check out the gigue from No.12 which is hammered out with such fierce intensity!
I've also heard Keith Jarrett in some of these pieces and as is often the case with his forays into classical music he's rather too straightlaced.

I couldn't agree more with reviewer Sobel, below, relative to these slap-dash interpretations. I, too, owned them on LP--- and was never quite happy, overall. The slow movements are tedious to the hilt, while aiming for the heartstrings, and the faster movements are done so "rapido" that it sets the head awhirl! Too slow, and too fast make for a poor mix. Throw in the fact that these are live recordings, with a sound that is rather hollow and clangorous, with an annoying brashness about it (probably stemming from the pianists' interpretations!), and you have a two-CD set that really isn't quality Handel. Keith Jarrett does, indeed, imbue these baroque masterpieces with the depth and dimension they deserve. His intimacy is spellbinding. Gavrilov and Richter merely irritate.

Unlike Bach's French or English Suites which have gained popularity amongst pianists within the last several years, Handel's nineteen extant Suites for the keyboard have, for the most part, been neglected. (For certain, there hasn't been a plethora of Handel keyboard works rendered on piano---CD or vinyl, period!)

The first "complete" cycle I owned came some twenty plus years ago in a boxed EMI LP import set performed by our friends, Richter and Gavrilov, from a live concert. The present CD two-fer originates from these tapes. For a person who had not heard more than one or two Handel Suites in his life, listening to them all was certainly thrilling.

Unfortunately, these recordings haven't worn well (either on vinyl or their CD incarnations): both sound and performance grow tedious and monotonous all too quickly (a distinct problem that may develop when baroque keyboard music is performed in a gruff, cursory manner). Richter and Gavrilov surely provide many felicitous moments, primarily during slow movements; but, more often than not, livelier ones are hammered out at annoyingly breakneck tempos. This manic "handling" gets old quickly.

[Running time--- CD 1: 59:28 CD 2: 59:53]