Handel: The Eight Great Suites

Danny Driver's recordings of C.P.E. Bach's keyboard works have been praised by critics as deeply stylish and revelatory accounts of eighteenth-century works on a modern piano. Now he turns to Handel's Eight Great Suites, largely written when the composer was living in England. They are an inspired, idiosyncratic amalgam of Gallic courtly dances, Italian vocal lyricism, Teutonic counterpoint and robust English tunefulness. Whereas Bach's keyboard suites follow broadly similar patterns, Handel's are unpredictable, with no two suites alike in the number and ordering of their movements. There are fugues, arias with variations, Italian-style sonata movements and even a Passacaglia. Compared with the elaborate finish of Bach's suites, Handel's often give the impression of written-down improvisations. In the fantasia-like Preludes, especially, Handel hints at his own genius as extemporizer, while leaving plenty to the performer's own imagination.