Handel : Complete Harpsichord Music, Volume 4

Description

This fourth volume of the complete harpsichord music by Handel is at the center of a systematic endeavor, guided by the Hallische Händel-Ausgabe and the HWV catalog. Instead of suites and large forms, it turns to a deliberately marginal province: minuets and opera arias rearranged for the keyboard, where the stage migrates to a cultivated domestic space and where the memory of opera continues to breathe. Disc 1 gathers the 37 Minuets HWV A151-37 and five arias HWV 482 from Rinaldo, Floridante, Radamisto, and Muzio Scevola. Disc 2 follows with HWV 497-558, dances drawn from overtures and theatrical numbers, often designed for accomplished amateurs. With the text removed, the rhetorical contour remains, oscillating between the dance step and the transposed song: a miniature theater, sculpted in time.