Customer Reviews

Handel: Music for Royal Fireworks/Water Music

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As the previous reviewer has outlined in depth the history of the piece and its segments, I will limit my review simply to the performance of the piece by the group and Leppard's direction. In one word: majestic!

This is one of the greatest performances for this piece available. Any German Baroque piece directed by Leppard is guaranteed to be a solid performance as he is a conductor who knows his specialties which are solidly Bach and Handel. The pieces are not hurried or uneven but instead simply graceful and balanced as they were intended. In everyway regal!

This is a great performance and the sound quality exemplary for an earlier recording such as this one. Leppard is always well balanced in his renditions particularly with those of Handel or Bach and especially concerti that include brass. You certainly can't go wrong with this model performance or any German Baroque performance directed by Leppard really. This is a great purchase and addition for anyone's classical music collection.

This is a great CD to satrt knowing Handel, and once know him, this CD will still be there, as wonderful as ever.

I just threw out my cassette of this recording once I saw it here on CD. I have had and cherished this music since I was a teenager - it helped start me liking classical music (1982)

Perhaps this is a little less authentic that more recent versions, perhaps a little more heavy and modernized. But it sure is a helluva lot of fun!

This CD contains two of George Frideric Handel's most famous works. "Water Music" premiered in July 1717 during a water party for King George I on the River Thames, and "Music for the Royal Fireworks" was composed for an April 1749 fireworks display that commemorated the end of the War of the Austrian Succession.

"Music for the Royal Fireworks" is very majestic, and "Water Music" evokes a sense of well-being and warmth (a great listen on a cold, rainy day). This disc would be a great addition to any classical music library.

On the evening of 17 July 1717, King George I and a large gathering of the English nobility boarded open barges on Thames at Whitehall and sailed up river to Chelsea, where they had dinner. It had been said that George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) wrote the music, in which over fifty instruments of all sorts and played the finest symphonies, specifically for the royal party. But it seems probable that some of parts it had been composed earlier for other purposes. The Water Music may have started life as two independent orchestral suites or concertos scored for woodwind and strings only, because the overture (Grave - Allegro - Adagio e staccato) [6], with its delicate writing for two solo violins, could have been conceived without outdoor performance. For the royal gathering in 1717, Handel could have combined the independent orchestral suites with horns and trumpets, which were obviously meant for outdoor performance.

During supper at Chelsea another consort was performed and yet a third concert accompanied the return journey was begun after two o'clock in the morning (such was the success of the evening that the King did not arrive back at St. James's palace until half-past four in the morning)! It was therefore without reason that Water Music divides naturally into three suites: Suite No. 1 in F and Suite No. 2 in D major, both brilliant and vivacious, clearly intended for the journeys by water, and Suite No. 3 in G major, much more subdued, convoluted, and intimate, making it more appropriate to the royal dinner.

The F major suite begins with a French overture - a slow introduction in sharply dotted rhythms followed by a movement with parts for solo oboe and violins. This gives rise to a beautiful arioso for oboe and strings. Then horns are heard for the first time in an allegro in triple time, which everyone will hear in one arrangement or another. The andante features the oboe and bassoons being antiphonally used with strings. At this point, the famous Air, one of the most beautiful melodies Handel ever wrote, seeps in with its beautiful horns. Suite No. 1 has such a beautiful scoring in middle section in which second violins, violas, and bassoon have the main melody with first violins and bass making a counterpoint around it.

Character of music in Suite No. 2 changes completely - omitting the horns and trumpets and the addition of a flute to the strings. Trumpets are to the orchestra for the first time in Suite No. 3. The G major opens with such grand ceremonial allegro followed by a splendid hornpipe, probably the most popular movement next to Air. The music concludes with a grand ceremonial minuet, which might have accompanied the royal party as the barge returned to Whitehall after a wonderful encounter on the river.

Music for the Royal Fireworks also begins with an overture in dotted rhythms, apt for the royal progress across St. James's Park. In this specific recording by the English Chamber Orchestra, the music once again brings back the grand splendor of the night in 1717.

2004 (41) ©MY