Royal patronage has rarely produced music as wonderful as Handel’s Water Music, which was played 300 years ago on 17 July 1717 for George I’s journey on the Thames. Bursting with life and a rather English sensibility, its subtlety of scoring is splendidly explored in this new recording from the Göttingen Festival Orchestra. Laurence Cummings makes the music dance and sing: touches like leaving the perky wind trios without continuo make the expressiveness of the strings as they enter all the more effective. As filler I would have preferred the various alternative movements of Water Music rather than the Alexander’s Feast Concerto Grosso, but this is all hugely enjoyable.
