Pavel Haas Quartet in Shostakovich

I have always had a soft spot for Dmitry Shostakovich's music. He is almost alone in 20th century composers in speaking directly to me. I have just been listening to hs 2nd, 7th and 8th string quartets played by the wonderful Pavel Haas Quartet. Terrific, personal music. Wonderful, committed playing. And, as one would expect, a demonstration-class recording by Supraphon, a company that appears to have mastered the art of balancing and recording string quartets. I wish the Pavel Hass Quartet would record more; I have loved them in Schubert, but await with impatience to hear them in Mozart and Haydn.

Georg Friedrich Händel in Italy

There are few of the great composers I would have wanted to meet in person; certainly not Mozart, nor Beethoven. But I would like to have met Georg Friedrich Händel, if only to hear about his travels as he flitted, seemingly effortlessly, between Germany, Italy, France, and England. He must have had some travel tales to relate! His period in Italy when aged only 21 or so would have been particularly interesting. He was in Florence, he was in Rome, he was in Venice, composing music on commission for various members of the nobility as he went. The cantatas and duetti that he composed at that time gave him ample material for exploitation in his later works, particularly his operas.

In a Handel marathon, I listened to eight Glossa CDs, recorded in Italy with all-Italian participants around 2005. The principal singer is Roberta Invernizzi (soprano). The band is La Risonanza, and the director is Fabio Bonizzoni. Around ten hours of listening to Handel's cantatas and duetti; quite a feast. The music varies in quality from excellent routine, to really first class. Sometimes Handel had a talented band of musicians at his disposal; at other times he appears to have been down to a harpsichord and basso continuo (probably also a result of the amount of ducats offered for the commission). Sometimes the band really goes to town: viz the extensive violin solo in the cantata Un'Alma Innamorata of 1707 in Rome that suggests that Arcangelo Corelli was in the band for that performance, as well as playing in the cantata from Rome Il Delirio Amoroso.

My ten hours went by swiftly. There is a lot to be said for having Italians singing Italian texts (also French for French texts, Germans for German texts, etc). The Glossa collection really takes one back to Italy in the period around 1707 (when Handel would have been just 22 years old). I have a vast collection of recordings of Handel's music; and I would not part with a single piece.