It is Mendelssohn's role in interpreting Bach's music for the 19th century that gets all the attention, but he was equally interested in Handel and conducted performances of ten of Handel's works over his lifetime, several times making new arrangements of the music. It is important to note that he did not think of these as "improvements," and in fact when one of his arrangements was published he demanded, in an example of modern musicology well before the fact, that his own contributions be clearly distinguished from Handel ...
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It is Mendelssohn's role in interpreting Bach's music for the 19th century that gets all the attention, but he was equally interested in Handel and conducted performances of ten of Handel's works over his lifetime, several times making new arrangements of the music. It is important to note that he did not think of these as "improvements," and in fact when one of his arrangements was published he demanded, in an example of modern musicology well before the fact, that his own contributions be clearly distinguished from Handel's original music in the printed score. The present recording is a reconstruction of a performance of Israel in Egypt given in Düsseldorf in 1833, using a German translation made several years earlier. Conductor Robert King and his King's Consort do not have to manufacture the score out of thin air: several pages survive of a performing score Mendelssohn used, showing the (quite lovely) low string continuo that he devised in the absence of an organ in the hall where the work was to...
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