Harpsichordist and ensemble leader Richard Egarr, in his rather argumentative booklet notes here (given in English, German, and French, with some of the humor stripped out in the last of these), tries to claim that Handel's two sets of trio sonatas, Op. 2 and Op. 5, are somehow neglected works. They've had plenty of recordings, and the attempt to strip them from the Handel canon that he darkly alludes to seems unlikely to succeed. It hardly matters, however, for these superb readings outstrip everything else on the market, ...
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Harpsichordist and ensemble leader Richard Egarr, in his rather argumentative booklet notes here (given in English, German, and French, with some of the humor stripped out in the last of these), tries to claim that Handel's two sets of trio sonatas, Op. 2 and Op. 5, are somehow neglected works. They've had plenty of recordings, and the attempt to strip them from the Handel canon that he darkly alludes to seems unlikely to succeed. It hardly matters, however, for these superb readings outstrip everything else on the market, including Egarr's own earlier versions. Here he works with a pair of Britain's top historical-instrument specialists, violinists Pavlo Beznosiuk and Rodolfo Richter, each playing gorgeous instruments from the third quarter of the seventeenth century. "Warning -- Musicians at Play," reads the heading on the notes, and that's the key to these versions: Egarr is of the opinion that these works are, above all, entertaining. He keeps the players to a very light touch in the slow...
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