Whisky, Haydn, Mozart, Handel's Cantatas

I listened to nine string quartets by Haydn, played by the Takacs Quartet, and the Goldmund Quartet. Very fine indeed. I then listened to the six string quartets that Mozart dedicated to Haydn (played by the Hagen Quartett). It was like going from Grant's blended whisky (my favourite blend) to a 12-year old Caol Ila malt (my favourite single malt). Mozart's music is on a different plane from Haydn's. Nothing wrong with Josef Haydn; it's just that Mozart's music is so much more sophisticated, complex, and subtle and juxtaposing the two composers with their better quartets just points up the difference.

No such whisky contrast going from J.S. Bach to Georg Handel. I have just embarked on listening to the cantatas and duets that Handel wrote in Italy when he was in his very early twenties. Bach is Caol Ila; Handel a 15-year old Laphroaigh (to continue the whisky metaphors). They are very different in taste, but equal in quality. Handel had a gift all his life of being able to surround himself with highly gifted instrumentalists and singers: violinists, bassoonists, cellists, oboists, or whatever. He himself was a master on any keyboard (like Bach). Fabio Bonizzoni and his group La Risonanza, often together with the superb soprano Roberta Invernezzi, produced seven CDs of Handel's Italian cantatas, plus an eighth CD with the Italian duets. It's a magnificent collection for Handel lovers. (Glossa).

The works often need highly talented solo instrumentalists, plus first-rate singers, which makes most of them unsuitable for amateur performances. Be it the highly virtuoso violin solos in Il Delirio Amoroso (Cardinal Pamphili), written probably for a band headed by Arcangelo Corelli, or the virtuoso soprano needed for Tra le Fiamme (Pamphili, again) the 22 year old Handel displays amazing compositional powers. For Handel lovers, it is always interesting to meet familiar tunes or themes that he was to re-use throughout his life, albeit in new garbs to match changing players or singer circumstances. Either Handel travelled with huge trunks containing manuscripts, or he had a quill pen with many terabytes of extended memory.

I often bemoan the fact that pretty well all the CDs in my collection are listened to only once, or rarely thereafter. This does not hold true for the cantatas of Bach, or Handel; they are often spinning on my CD player.