Customer Reviews

Landowska Plays Handel

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

All the Handel items Landowska recorded in Paris during the 1930s are transferred onto this well-filled CD. There is also a 1950 performance, recorded live, duplicating the Sarabande from the Suite No 7. Shoppers familiar with the work of this diminutive, dynamic, creative musician will find plenty to enjoy here, and need only be warned to expect a few clicks and pops deriving, apparently, from the "loaned" copies from which the transfers were made.

Those unfamiliar with this remarkable personality will hear music making that is likely to fascinate and/or repel. Fascinating is the rhythmic buoyancy of some of the dance movements, the grand declamatory style used for some of the allemandes, and a clearer articulation than can usually be produced by a harpsichord. Offence might be given by the excessive changes of registration (obtrusive during a descending left hand scale in the Menuetto of the D Minor Suite), the frequent use of a booming sixteen foot tone, and the reprise of an "air" following its set of variations. Justification might be provided by explaining that Landowska's mission in the early C20th was to revive the long-forgotten harpsichord repertoire.

The concerto, recorded in 1937 not 1935 as listed in the notes, is one of Handel's Op 6 set. In 1937 it was thought to be the exclusive domain of organ soloists, with orchestral support. Nowadays, it and several other of Handel's "organ" concerti are sometimes allocated to harpsichord and orchestra. This one is also heard in performance nowadays for lute, harp and orchestra. There appears to be good historic grounds for all these variants.

Although an erudite scholar as well as performer, Landowska may not always have had good historic grounds for whatever she did, but her playing always seemed vital, ably demonstrating her maxim, "Music is what lies between the notes".