From Handel's Home by Delphian Records

Julian Perkins

George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), arr. Handel

with Carole Cerasi ‡

From

Handel’s Hakendyboael rds Home Hendrix House

Largo

[1:12]

Presto

[1:46]

Presto

[1:07]

William Babell (c.1689–1723)

The

Double-manual harpsichord (after Ioannes Ruckers, 1624) by Bruce Kennedy, 1998 bk Single-manual harpsichord (after William Smith, c.1720) by Michael Cole, 1998 mc

Ouverture to Rodelinda HWV 456 No. 4 BK

Toccata No. 9 in G minor* MC

[2:04]

II.

[2:04]

6 George Frideric Handel

A Voluntary or A Flight of Angels HWV 600 G&G

[0:57]

George Frideric Handel

Suite No. 2 in F major HWV 427 BK

Adagio

[2:53]

Allegro

[2:25]

Adagio

[1:36]

[Fugue:] Allegro

[2:44]

11 George Frideric Handel, arr. William Babell

Bel piacere** MC

[2:02]

Single-manual organ (after Richard Bridge and Thomas Parker, 1749) by Martin Goetze & Dominic Gwynn, 1998 g&g

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767)

Spinet by Joseph Mahoon, 1749 jm

Fantasia in D minor TWV 33:2 JM

Bureau Organ by John Snetzler, 1752 js

Presto

[1:21]

Double-manual harpsichord by Jacob Kirckman, London 1754 jk

Adagio

[1:03]

Presto da capo

[1:25]

15 George Frideric Handel, arr. anon Deutsche Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Mus. ms. 9172)

Fugue in G major (from Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 1)** JS

John Stanley (1712–1786)

Voluntary in D major Op. 5 No. 5 JS

Allemande

[3:57]

Slow

[1:29]

Courante

[2:26]

[2:37]

Sarabande

[4:23]

Chaconne

[2:25]

30 Rhian Samuel (b. 1944)

Sarabande (from Isolation Suite)** JK

[2:31]

Allegro

Georg Frideric Handel

Suite in C minor for two keyboards

[3:04]

George Frideric Handel

Fugue No. 5 in A minor HWV 609 G&G

[4:25]

18 Georg Philipp Telemann

Fantasia in B flat major TWV 33:24 JM

Gratieusement

[2:15]

Gaillardement

[1:03]

Vitement

[0:52]

22 George Frideric Handel, arr. Handel

Air in G major ‘O the pleasure of the plains’ HWV 474 G&G

[1:32]

23 Thomas Roseingrave (c.1689–1766)

Introduction to Scarlatti’s Lessons JK

[2:36]

24 Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757)

Sonata in G minor K 4 JK

[5:13]

25 Domenico Scarlatti

Sonata in G minor K 124 JK

[5:16]

HWV 446 BK‡ JK

Total playing time

[71:00]

* premiere recording ** premiere recording in this version

Julian Perkins would like to acknowledge Peter Holden and Ruth Smith for their assistance and expertise, Carsten Wollin for his edition of Handel’s Fugue in G major, Andrew Woolley for his edition of the Toccata by Babell, and Judith Wardman for her editorial assistance. Thanks are also due to Oliver Sändig and Simon Daniels for sterling work assisting with organ stops.

Recorded on 8-10 May 2023 at Handel Hendrix House, London Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter

Design: Eliot Garcia Booklet editor: Henry Howard Cover: Martin O’Neill, cutitout.co.uk Session photography: foxbrush.co.uk Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com

@ delphianrecords @ delphianrecords @ delphian_records

This recording is dedicated to the memory of Mark Ransom (1934–2019): musician, craftsman, connoisseur, mentor and devoted friend

Urbane, well-read, endearingly quirky and in possession of a refined sense of humour, Mark Ransom was many things to many people: deeply knowledgeable about horticulture (informed by his family’s business), a ceramics expert and collector of mid-century decorative arts honed as a buyer for Heal’s of London. Also a consummate social bridge player and accomplished host, Mark eventually chose to devote his life to music and musicians. Taking up the harpsichord, he developed a formidable knowledge of its repertoire and a connoisseur’s ear for stylish playing. An accomplished woodworker with the instinct, patience and practicality of a craftsman, he taught himself to make harpsichords and tune them with precision, and gradually became their champion. Over the years he attracted and sustained a wide circle of friends both inside and outside the musical world whom he would visit professionally and for pleasure, mingle with at musical events and invite to recitals and supper parties at his small but beautifully and cleverly presented Paddington mews house. He worked closely with many of the finest early-music artists of his day from Britain and abroad, offering hospitality and providing useful introductions as well as superbly maintained instruments. In turn he became highly sought-after for tuning at

concerts and in the recording studios; his generosity and skilful professionalism are warmly acknowledged in the liner notes of countless CDs. As a collector himself, Mark also informally advised fellow collectors of keyboard instruments on acquisitions and introduced potential buyers for their instruments. Most admirably, Mark was a caring and steadfast friend to generations of young people who were embarking on careers in early music, whether as performers (whom he affectionately referred to as ‘minstrels’) or instrument makers and technicians. To create a workshop and guest accommodation, he acquired the adjoining house. Although not a parent himself, his instinct was to nurture young artists with invitations to practise and rehearse with their ensembles in his home. Indeed, he created countless opportunities for them to perform there for his friends. He initially lent them his instruments, then helped them to acquire their own, meanwhile teaching other young people to make, maintain and repair them. He seemed effortlessly to mix warmth and kindness with the firmness and quiet professionalism that characterised every aspect of his life. His legacy is alive and well, resonating with those he once helped, Julian Perkins among them, as they practise what they learned from him and pass it to the next generation.

From the mid 1990s he became deeply involved in the sourcing and maintenance of many of those instruments today in the collection of the Handel House Trust, including the organs. Nevertheless, even to those of us who knew Mark well, his generous bequest to the Trust of the two Paddington properties came as a humbling surprise. That it should have arrived just as fundraising campaign for the recent ambitious restoration of the museum was getting underway was precisely the timing Mark would have had in mind when he made his will. This recording, made by Julian Perkins on the keyboards in the Handel Hendrix House collection, marks the reopening in 2023 – the tercentenary of Handel’s lease on the terrace house at 25 Brook Street, Mayfair – and serves as a fitting tribute to an exceptionally generous and much-loved man. Julie Anne Sadie Goode The musicologist Julie Anne Sadie Goode served as the first Director of the Handel House Museum. In collaboration with her husband Stanley Sadie, she compiled Calling on the Composer: A Guide to European Composer Houses and Museums (2005).

Notes on the music It is easy for us to forget Handel’s renown as a keyboardist. Soon after the musician first arrived in Rome, the diarist Francesco Valesio noted on 14 January 1707 that the Saxon newcomer was ‘an excellent player of the harpsichord’. At around the same time, the French Huguenot Denis Nolhac heard Handel playing the harpsichord among a group of papal musicians, and later described that he ‘played the instrument so skilfully that everyone was very surprised, and because Handel was a Saxon, and therefore a Lutheran, that made them suspect that his skill was supernatural’.1 According to John Mainwaring’s Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel (1760), at Venice he was ‘discovered there at a Masquerade, while he was playing on a harpsichord in his visor. [Domenico] Scarlatti happened to be there, and affirmed that it could be no one but the famous Saxon, or the devil.’ On 4 June 1710, the Dowager Electress of Hanover wrote to her granddaughter Princess Sophia Dorothea of Prussia that Handel ‘surpasses anything anyone has heard in playing the harpsichord’. In London, his gifts of improvisation and composition at the keyboard attracted admiration, although a few observers were immune. James Harris recorded in his notebook (on 21 April 1743) that ‘The celebrated [Sir Isaac] Newton, hearing Handel play on the Harpsichord, could find nothing worthy to remark, but the Elasticity of his Fingers.’

Shortly after the inaugural opera productions of the Royal Academy of Music, Handel obtained his first Royal Privilege for copyright protection of the publications of his music. Copies of the Royal Privilege were included in Handel’s Suites de pieces pour le clavecin, first published on 14 November 1720. He probably prepared the set of eight keyboard suites over several years. At least 32 out of the total 38 movements already existed by 1718, but several suites were revised extensively for the publication – including Suite No. 2 in F major hwv 427. Unusually, this four-movement work is not the traditional suite structure of a prelude followed by French-style dance movements. Instead, it opens with an Adagio followed by an Italianate Allegro, and then another modulatory Adagio leads into a fugal Allegro finale; coincidentally, a fragment of Mozart’s autograph arrangement of this fugue for string quartet (Vienna, c.1782–3) is owned by the Handel House Trust. The chromatic-infused Fugue No. 5 in A minor hwv 609 was probably composed at about the same time as most of the pieces in the ‘Eight Great Suites’. It was published eventually by John Walsh in Six Fugues or Voluntarys for Organ or Harpsichord (1735), just a few years before it served as Handel’s model for the chorus ‘They loathed to drink

of the river’ in Israel in Egypt (1739). The Air in G major hwv 474 probably dates from the late 1730s and is an abridged treatment of the ritornellos in ‘O the pleasure of the plains’ (Acis and Galatea, 1718), shorn of its madrigalian five-voice chorus passages. An organ Voluntary in C major (hwv 588) was among eleven brief pieces composed sometime between 1735 and 1740 for a mechanical musical clock designed by Charles Clay (d. 1740). These were copied by the oratorio librettist Charles Jennens in a manuscript preserved in the British Library that is inscribed as ‘Tunes for Clay’s Musical Clock’. The voluntary was one of three original miniature pieces copied along with arrangements of arias from Muzio Scevola, Ottone, Sosarme and Arianna in Creta. Jennens also copied out another second set of tunes headed ‘Sonata for a Musical Clock’ (also now in the British Library), which included an alternative version of the voluntary nicknamed A Flight of Angels hwv 600 with the left-hand part an octave higher. By contrast, the Suite in C minor for two keyboards hwv 446 is an early work, most likely composed during Handel’s years in Hamburg (1703–6); although eighteenth-century sources preserve only one harpsichord part, Julian Perkins and Carole Cerasi have created their own hybrid two-harpsichord version inspired by

reconstructions completed by Thurston Dart, Donald Burrows and David Vine.2 A manuscript of German provenance in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin is an anthology of miscellaneous Handel fugues, and its anonymous copyist also included transcriptions of fugues from the composer’s other works, including an animated Fugue in G major adapted from the fourth movement of the Concerto Grosso Op. 6 No. 1 (hwv 319). Aspiring keyboardists in eighteenth-century Britain could acquire keyboard arrangements of overtures from Handel’s operas and oratorios. A series of eleven volumes were published by Walsh between 1726 and 1758 (all but the last reprinted at least once), and many of these were compiled into larger anthologies such as Handel’s Sixty Overtures from all his Operas and Oratorios Set for the Harpsichord or Organ (c.1755). Although these printed transcriptions were often clumsy hackwork of dubious authorship, superior arrangements were disseminated in manuscript. Five survive in Handel’s own autograph that recompose passages idiomatically to better suit a solo harpsichord. His own keyboard version of the Ouverture to Rodelinda hwv 456 No. 4 is in the Fitzwilliam Museum on paper dating from 1725–6 that corresponds closely to the opera’s original production.

Notes on the music The popularity of Handel’s operatic music refashioned for solo harpsichord is also manifest in arias from Rinaldo (1711) treated idiosyncratically by William Babell in Suits of the most Celebrated Lessons Collected and Fitted to the Harpsichord or Spinnet by Mr. Wm. Babell with Variety of Passages by the Author (published by John Walsh and Joseph Hare in 1717). Babell’s arrangement of Almirena’s cheerful aria Bel piacere is elaborately arpeggiated – the publication’s rubric ‘Sung by Sigra Isabella in the Opera of Rinaldo’ should be taken with an extremely large pinch of salt. A variety of Babell’s own original solo harpsichord music is preserved in a manuscript in the Biblioteca Musicale Gaetano Donizetti, Bergamo; his Toccata No. 9 in G minor has a first movement based loosely on the ground-bass opening of Purcell’s song ‘Here the Deities approve’ from the St Cecilia ode Welcome to all the pleasures, followed by a fugue that is identical to Handel’s autograph of a Capriccio (hwv 483) in the Fitzwilliam Museum.3

Handel was not the only musician in early eighteenth-century London to have encountered Domenico Scarlatti in Italy. Thomas Roseingrave was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and in 1709 he went to study for about four years in Italy ‘to improve himself in the art of music’. At a nobleman’s house in Venice he was so humbled by Scarlatti’s harpsichord playing that he did not touch a keyboard instrument for a month afterwards, but, after overcoming his inferiority complex, he befriended Scarlatti and followed him to Rome and Naples. In 1725 Roseingrave was appointed as organist at St George’s, Hanover Square (Handel’s parish church), where he impressed learned musicians with his improvisations of fugues on the church’s new three-manual organ by Gerard Smith. An ardent champion of Scarlatti’s music, Roseingrave’s edition of 42 suites de pièces … composées par Domenico Scarlatti (1739) comprised thirty pieces taken from Scarlatti’s influential Essercizi per gravicembalo (c.1737–8), including the Sonata in G minor K 4, and another twelve pieces hitherto available only in manuscript; Roseingrave also provided his own contrapuntal ‘Introduction to

Scarlatti’s Lessons’ in G minor. Scarlatti’s own compositional imagination and virtuosity are attested to by the cascading passagework in the Sonata in G major K 124, a triple-time Allegro, preserved among fifteen volumes of neatly copied manuscripts in Parma’s Biblioteca Palatina. Among nearly a hundred subscribers to Roseingrave’s edition of Scarlatti sonatas were the leading British musicians Arne, Boyce, Greene, Avison (another avid Scarlattian acolyte) and John Stanley. A blind prodigy who studied with Maurice Greene at St Paul’s Cathedral, when he was only twelve Stanley succeeded the deceased Babell as organist at All Hallows, Bread Street. As well as composing theatre music for Drury Lane, Stanley took over the co-direction of Handel’s oratorios at Covent Garden (with John Christopher Smith Jr) after the composer’s death, and during the mid 1770s he conducted the Foundling Hospital’s annual benefit performances of Messiah. Stanley published three sets of organ voluntaries between 1748 and 1754, although some pieces date from the 1720s and 1730s. The Voluntary in D major Op. 5 No. 5 (1748) is in two movements with an introduction marked ‘Slow’ and intended for diapasons (it seems to pay tribute to the Hallelujah chorus) and a quick Allegro that alternates between trumpet and stopped diapason.

Handel’s music library at Brook Street contained plenty of music by other composers, not least several collections by his friend Georg Philipp Telemann, with whom he corresponded (in French) about their shared enthusiasm for horticulture. Handel subscribed to Telemann’s Musique de Table (Hamburg, 1733) and must have had ready access to the sacred cantata series Harmonischer Gottes-Dienst (published in instalments between December 1725 and January 1727). It is estimated that Telemann wrote at least 145 solo keyboard pieces, and three dozen of them were printed in Hamburg by the composer himself between 1732 and 1733 in Fantaisies pour le clavessin. The Fantasia in D minor twv 33:2 is an Italianate da capo structure with an agile A section, marked Presto, and a transitional Adagio that exploits dissonances before the Presto is repeated, whereas the Fantasia in B flat major twv 33:24 has French-titled movements that signify a graceful dance in 6/8, a galliard, a repeat of the Gratieusement and then a lively Vitement coda.

Notes on the music Julian Perkins also integrates into the programme a twenty-first-century piece by the Welsh composer Rhian Samuel. A champion of female composers, she coedited the New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers (1994) with Julie Anne Sadie. Having played the viol and wind instruments in early music ensembles during her youth, Samuel’s influence from baroque musical dance forms is evident in the Sarabande used in her Isolation Suite, written during the COVID-19 lockdown in summer 2020. © 2024 David Vickers David Vickers is a council member of The Handel Institute and his publications include The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia (2009) and New Perspectives on Handel’s Music: Essays in Honour of Donald Burrows (2022).

1 All documents quoted are taken from Donald Burrows, Helen Coffey, John Greenacombe and Anthony Hicks (eds): George Frideric Handel: Collected Documents (Cambridge University Press, 2013–). 2 In this recording the performers swap parts: Carole Cerasi plays first harpsichord but then in the repeats Julian Perkins switches from second harpsichord to first, except in the Sarabande where each harpsichordist remains on the same part throughout. 3 Andrew Woolley proposes that Handel might have been copying

out a piece composed by Babell (‘New light on William Babell’s development as a keyboard composer’, Early Music 46/2 (May 2018), pp. 255–6). However, Handel’s autograph on a paper-type from the early 1720s contains musical material that he reused in Lotario (1729) and Alexander’s Feast (1736).

Also available on Delphian Handel: Overture Transcriptions & Harpsichord Suites John Kitchen

Instruments from the Russell Collection Vol. II John Kitchen

DCD34053

DCD34039

Handel’s overtures had an independent life almost from their inception, and the practice of performing them on keyboard instruments has a similarly long pedigree, beginning with a number of transcriptions made by the composer himself. John Kitchen virtuosically evokes Handel’s orchestral palette in the welter of timbres and colours which he summons forth from the Russell Collection’s 1755 Jacob Kirckman harpsichord, a classic instrument from the apex of the English harpsichord-building tradition.

Edinburgh University’s Russell Collection is one of the world’s finest collections of early keyboard instruments. The second volume in John Kitchen’s ongoing project to bring its musical exhibits to life matches music by Handel, Purcell, the Scottish composer Robert Bremner and others including Mozart’s son Franz Xaver with a gloriously vigorous menagerie of spinets, virginals, chamber organs, clavichords and harpsichords.

‘stylishly played … The music is universally glorious’ — Sunday Times, August 2009

‘a supreme achievement … Every one a gem, as are Kitchen’s stylishly bright performances’ — The Scotsman, March 2006

Music from the Age of Louis XIV: the Baillon harpsichord John Kitchen

J.S. Bach: The French Suites Peter Hill piano

DCD34109

DCD34166

John Kitchen continues his much-lauded series of recordings of the world-famous keyboard collections in St Cecilia’s Hall with a programme specially designed to highlight the unique qualities of the 1755 double-manual harpsichord by Luigi Baillon. Built in Cyteux, Burgundy, it has a very different sound from Parisian instruments of the time: cleaner and brighter in tone, and the perfect vehicle for Kitchen’s subtly nuanced playing, which brings the sophistication of the period to new life. The familiarity born of Kitchen’s daily experience with the Edinburgh collections and their setting shines through these performances.

The French Suites have a special place among Bach’s keyboard works.Besides containing music as profound and poetic as any he wrote, their textures have a transparency and sparkle that reflect a move towards the galant style. Hill follows the suites with his own completion of Mozart’s Suite in C, K 399, a work epitomising Mozart’s fascination with Baroque music. Hill’s celebrated return to the studio with Delphian continues to reap rich artistic rewards; here in Bach his abundant energy and passion are deeply informed by a lifetime of scholarship.

‘Vividly alert to the widest range of styles and moods, Kitchen’s survey of music from the age of Louis XIV is a delight from start to finish.’ — Classical Music, September 2013

‘there’s a confiding wisdom sustaining [Hill’s] latest Bachian foray. Trademark unshowy integrity, too, articulated through a silky translucent tone and captured in an agreeably intimate recording.’ — BBC Music Magazine, February 2016

Also available on Delphian Mozart: ‘Coronation’ Mass in C, Vesperae Solennes de Confessore Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum / Charivari Agréable; Laurence Kilsby, Jeremy Kenyon, Christopher Watson, Christopher Borrett soloists / Benjamin Nicholas

Handel: The Triumph of Time and Truth Sophie Bevan, Mary Bevan, Tim Mead, Ed Lyon, William Berger soloists, Ludus Baroque / Richard Neville-Towle DCD34135 (2 discs)

PRESTO Recordings of the Year 2014 – Winner

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Ludus Baroque and five stellar soloists bring to life Handel’s rarely heard final oratorio, a remarkable Protestant re-casting of a work written in Rome fifty years earlier. Compelled to accept the divine order of change and decay, Beauty ultimately gives way to an assertion of redemption by good works, reflected in the incorporation of choruses Handel had written for the Foundling Hospital. The resulting work, neglected by centuries of scholarship on account of its hybrid origins, here proves an extraordinary feast of riches.

Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum and Charivari Agréable come together for the first time in vividly communicative interpretations of three of Mozart’s sacred masterpieces. The forces are very much as Mozart intended – a period orchestra, an all-male chorus and soloists drawn from the choir. Under Benjamin Nicholas’s spirited direction these performances bristle with energy and the invigorating freshness of youth. ‘the young trebles of Tewkesbury Abbey are a force to be reckoned with. They sing musically and fearlessly with excellent diction and a mature, warm tone’ — Choir and Organ, September 2011

‘finely shaped, unflamboyant conducting, gracious playing … Sophie Bevan plays Beauty in what is arguably her finest recording to date; the final aria is breathtaking’ — The Guardian, June 2014 Music from the Age of Louis XV: the Taskin harpsichord John Kitchen

Bach: Lute Suites BWV 996–998 Sean Shibe guitar

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John Kitchen – uniquely familiar with Edinburgh’s internationally acclaimed collections of early keyboard instruments – turns his attention to the world’s most famous harpsichord, rarely recorded hitherto: the 1769 Pascal Taskin instrument now housed in the Raymond Russell Collection. It was during the reign of Louis XV that the harpsichord gained its greatest popularity in France, and this glorious 1769 instrument would have been a preferred choice for any composer of the epoch. Here its opulent lushness is captured in the ideal acoustics of Scotland’s oldest concert hall.

Three years as a Delphian artist have seen Sean Shibe record music from seventeenth-century Scottish lute manuscripts to twenty-first-century works for electric guitar, picking up multiple editor’s choices and award nominations for each release, as well as the Royal Philharmonic Society’s prestigious Young Artist of the Year accolade. Now he turns to the music of J.S. Bach, with three works whose obscure early performance history belies their status as repertoire staples for modern guitarists. The musicological questions that have arisen over what instrument Bach intended for these works are here answered by the unshakeable assurance of Shibe’s performances.

‘Every harpsichord-lover must have this … The Edinburgh Taskin is just sumptuous and it and the player are on top form’ — Early Music Review, October 2012

PRESTO Recordings of the Year 2020 – Winner

‘masterful, beautiful and convincing in every way’ — The Times, May 2020, five stars

Biographies Dubbed ‘The Indiana Jones of Early Music’ by BBC Radio 3, Julian Perkins brings a dynamic and adventurous spirit to all his music-making. Based in the UK, he is Artistic Director of the Portland Baroque Orchestra in Oregon, USA, Artistic Director of Cambridge Handel Opera and Founder Director of Sounds Baroque. Julian was shortlisted for the 2021 Gramophone Award for his recording of Eccles’s Semele with the Academy of Ancient Music and Cambridge Handel Opera, and in August 2023 his latest solo clavichord disc, Handel’s Attick, was Instrumental Choice in BBC Music Magazine. As both keyboard soloist and conductor he has been praised in print for his ‘demonic intensity’ (BBC Music Magazine Recording of the Month), ‘fluid and natural pacing’ (Gramophone Editor’s Choice) and ‘verve and suavity’ (Classical Music), conducting ‘as if every bar means the world to him’ (Opera Disc of the Month), and giving ‘performances that reach to the heart of the music’ (International Record Review).

As a keyboard player, Julian performs regularly at the Salzburg Festival and has given concerto performances with ensembles including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Florilegium and Royal Northern Sinfonia. He has appeared as solo harpsichordist/fortepianist with the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and Welsh National Opera, among others. He features regularly on BBC Radio 3’s Early Music Show and In Tune and has performed as a soloist at venues such as London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center and Sydney Opera House. An avid recitalist, Julian often breaks new ground at international festivals by giving solo clavichord concerts, has premièred many works and cocommissioned pieces by Stephen Dodgson, Iain Farrington and Héloïse Werner. Duo recitals include appearances for the Mozart Society of America, Oxford International Song Festival and Royal Opera House with a wide range of renowned singers and instrumentalists.

With Sounds Baroque, Julian has directed acclaimed performances with such singers as Helen Charlston, Anna Dennis, Rebecca Evans, Dame Emma Kirkby, Mark Padmore, Christopher Purves, Ashley Riches, Carolyn Sampson and Lawrence Zazzo. He has directed numerous groups ranging from the Academy of Ancient Music and Portland Baroque Orchestra to the Northern Chamber Orchestra and Orchestra of Welsh National Opera, and has worked closely with conductors including Ivor Bolton, Christopher Hogwood, Vladimir Jurowski and Trevor Pinnock. He has led over twenty Baroque projects with Southbank Sinfonia and often conducts staged opera productions. His frequent appearances directing Sounds Baroque include groundbreaking performances of newly minted pasticcio operas, co-created with librettist Stephen Pettitt, which tell cogent stories, challenging notions of ‘authenticity’. An advocate of what he terms ‘Historically Inspired Performance’, Julian enjoys giving masterclasses at music colleges and universities in the UK and abroad and at the National Opera Studio in London. He has also written a variety of published articles on performance practice and devised Handel’s Green Room, a series of online discussions, with Cambridge Handel Opera and the scholar Dr Ruth Smith.

Carole Cerasi is one of the foremost early keyboard players of her generation. In the last 25 years she has established herself at the very front rank of performers and recording artists in her field. Her many performances have received great critical acclaim and her recordings have garnered an impressive series of awards. Known for her expressive and virtuosic interpretations, fluidity of phrasing and refined touch, she has delighted audiences and critics alike. Carole has given recitals throughout Europe, performing in major festivals, as well as in Japan, Singapore, Colombia, Canada and the States. A highly respected teacher, Carole is Professor of Harpsichord and Fortepiano at the Royal Academy of Music, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the Yehudi Menuhin School. She has recently been named harpsichord professor at the Royal Conservatoire, The Hague.

Notes on the instruments Handel’s fingerprints left their trace across an extraordinary number of keyboards in eighteenth-century Europe. Wherever he travelled, Handel sought out local organs to play, and his friends eagerly invited his opinion on their prospective purchases. Keyboard makers proudly published Handel’s stamp of approval on their instruments and his own curiosity led him to explore the most recent inventions and experiment with the newest sounds. Anecdotes from passers-by and the reported ‘grooves’ left on the keys of his own Ruckers harpsichord reveal a prodigious practice habit. ‘You can be no other but the great Handel!’ exclaimed an organist when Handel began to play unannounced in a church in Flanders. Whilst Handel’s contemporaries recognised his musical voice though his keyboard playing, it is only through his compositions that we can hear that voice today. Using original instruments and exquisitely built copies now on display at Handel Hendrix House, this recording provides an aural snapshot of the kinds of instruments that Handel interacted with during his time living at 25 Brook Street.

Double-manual harpsichord (after Ioannes Ruckers, 1624) by Bruce Kennedy, 1998 ‘The harpsichords of the Ruckers have long been valued for the fullness and sweetness of their tone,’ wrote the music historian John Hawkins in 1776, and indeed they held a Stradivarius-like status in the keyboard-playing world. Handel certainly performed on many of these prized instruments and he encountered a particularly elaborate Ruckers whilst at Cannons in the employment of James Brydges. Evidence suggests that Handel owned his own Ruckers harpsichords which he used for directing his operas and oratorios in Covent Garden. The harpsichord heard here was made in 1998 by the illustrious harpsichord maker Bruce Kennedy, whose harpsichords are now sought after across the world. It is based on an instrument known as the ‘Colmar Ruckers’ which was made in 1624 and now housed in the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar, France. Ruckers harpsichords were status symbols collected by a wide cross-section of the upper classes and often featured beautiful Dutch and Flemish paintings on the lids. Although it was probably intended for a large German instrument rather than a Ruckers, a sketch for a harpsichord lid painting entitled ‘peace introduces arts and sciences who sacrifice to apollo and co’ survives alongside the note that

it was for ‘Mr Handel’. The ornate and detailed lid for the 1998 Kenney harpsichord was designed and painted by Pamela Gladding.

Handel’. The ornate and detailed lid for the 1998 Kenney harpsichord was designed and painted by Pamela Gladding.

Single-manual harpsichord (after William Smith, c.1720) by Michael Cole, 1998

Single-manual organ (after Richard Bridge and Thomas Parker, 1749) by Martin Goetze & Dominic Gwynn, 1998

The artist Philippe Mercier painted a famous portrait of Handel around 1730, capturing him thinking and composing, wig-less in a relaxed home environment, his elbow resting on a harpsichord. It is believed that the harpsichord in the portrait is from the workshop of William Smith. A similar instrument from c.1720 by Smith is now in the Bate Collection, Oxford, and formed the basis for the copy made by Michael Cole in 1998 heard here. This delicate harpsichord has one manual with a range of five octaves. Its keyboard has white keys and the accidentals are fashioned in a ‘skunk tail style’ with one ivory strip between two strips of ebony. There are three pierced brass hinges to the lid, with three S-shaped hooks to keep it closed, and the Smith instrument has a walnut case with sycamore veneer to the interior. and Flemish paintings on the lids. Although it was probably intended for a large German instrument rather than a Ruckers, a sketch for a harpsichord lid painting entitled ‘peace introduces arts and sciences who sacrifice to apollo and co’ survives alongside the note that it was for ‘Mr

Charles Jennens, the librettist of Messiah, commissioned Richard Bridge to make him an organ and asked Handel for his advice on its specifications. In September 1749, Handel replied with strong support of Bridge and recommended the organ stops that Jennens should request. ‘I have referred you to the flute stop,’ Handel wrote, advising that reed stops ‘are continually wanting to be tuned which in the country is very inconvenient’. The resulting instrument still survives and is housed in St James’s Church in Great Packington, Warwickshire. Martin Goetze and Dominic Gwynn were commissioned by the Handel House Trust to build the organ heard here, using details from Jennens’s organ. It has a stained oak case, with gilded dummy metal front pipes, and a gilded cherub’s head. The keys are ebony naturals with ‘sandwich’ sharps. The stop knobs are ebony, next to engraved brass labels and the key compass is 54 notes.

Notes on the instruments Spinet by Joseph Mahoon, 1749 Joseph Mahoon (d. 1773) was a British harpsichord and spinet maker. He was appointed as harpsichord maker to the king in 1729 and had a workshop in London’s Golden Square from the 1730s. This bentside spinet, on long-term loan from a private collection, dates from 1749 and was restored in 2007 by Miles Hellon. It has one keyboard with white ivory keys and black accidentals with a range of five octaves. Thirteen spinets made by Mahoon are known to survive, and this may have been the last one that he made. Bureau Organ by John Snetzler, 1752 Johann (later John) Snetzler (1710–1785) was born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. He came to London in the early 1740s and was established in business by 1747. He first found wide popular recognition with his work on the organ for St Margaret’s, Kings Lynn in 1754. He became a British citizen in 1770. Small, portable, and in a desk-like case, this instrument is typical of the ‘bureau’ organs for which Snetzler was well known.

The Handel House Trust Handel played concertos on larger organs as part of his oratorio performances and they were well received. They ‘are the finest things I ever heard in my life’ enthused Mary Pendarves after hearing him play two organ concertos in a performance on Esther. His performances inspired a popular love for the organ and perhaps fuelled the demand for smaller, portable, domestic instruments. It is possible that Handel used two small bureau organs by Snetzler for accompaniment roles in performances of Deborah in 1733. This organ has a case made of mahogany and has a range of four octaves over a singlemanual keyboard that features black keys with white ivory accidentals. Double-manual harpsichord by Jacob Kirckman, London 1754 One of the finest harpsichord makers of the eighteenth century, Jacob Kirckman was born in Alsace in 1710 and came to London in the early 1730s. He set up a workshop in Soho Square and became a British citizen in 1755, anglicising his name to Kirkman. It was one of Kirkman’s double-manual harpsichords that Handel’s friend Anne Donnellan bought and Handel himself played on social occasions that she hosted from December 1755. This elegant harpsichord recorded here was made in 1754 from walnut wood, inlaid with boxwood squares, with white keys fashioned

from ivory. The front bears a silver plaque set in tortoiseshell and engraved with a trophy of instruments, beneath the words ‘O decus Phaebi’ (The glory of Phoebus Apollo) and ‘Jacobus Kirckman, Londini fecit’ (made in London) 1754. It has two manuals, 2 x 8’ on the lower manual, and 1 x 4’ on the upper manual with lute stop. Olwen Foulkes Assistant Curator, Handel Hendrix House

In May 2023, Handel’s London home of more than 30 years at 25 Brook Street reopened following extensive restoration and refurbishment. The building is cared for by the Handel House Trust, a charity founded by the musicologist Stanley Sadie who, together with his wife Julie Anne and many eminent musicians and champions of Handel’s music, had long campaigned to save and preserve Handel’s house. Handel moved into Brook Street, Mayfair in summer 1723. He was the first occupant of the house in what was then an emerging residential area of London. Here he lived and worked until his death in 1759. In 1905, Handel’s house was acquired by the antiques dealer C. J. Charles, who set about converting the building into a showroom, removing internal walls and many original features and, most dramatically, destroying the appearance of the façade with a two-storey shop front. As the musician Algernon Ashton said at the time ‘the beautiful old house, which has been splendidly preserved, has been spoilt beyond recognition’.

The Handel House Trust In 2001 the upper floors of 25 Brook Street were opened by the Trust as the Handel House Museum. It was for this original museum that several of the instruments heard on this recording, and cared for so assiduously by Mark Ransom, were commissioned or first put on display. Having re-created and opened the flat of rock musician Jimi Hendrix in the adjoining 23 Brook Street in 2016, the Trust developed plans to restore the lower floors of Handel’s home, which remained an independent shop. When Mark Ransom died in 2019, the Trust learned it was to be the beneficiary of a bequest from his estate of extraordinary generosity. It was this bequest that enabled the Trust to proceed with restoration works between 2020 and 2023, a period in which most fundraising activity was curtailed by the pandemic. Mark’s bequest and the support of donors enabled the Trust to complete the ‘Hallelujah Project’ to restore all Handel’s home and open it to the public in time to mark the 300th anniversary of Handel’s first moving in.

Julian Perkins: An interview with Lucie Skeaping Now known as Handel Hendrix House the museum is open to the public five days a week and presents Handel’s house as it might have been in the 1740s, alongside Jimi Hendrix’s flat. Our wonderful keyboards are enjoyed by visitors in live performance most days and in concerts throughout the year. We are a charity that must raise all our own funds, and your purchase of this recording helps us to care for Handel’s home and our instruments. This recording is dedicated in affectionate memory of Mark Ransom, whose knowledge, skill and generosity have left such a remarkable legacy at Handel’s house. The Trust also pays tribute to the memory of the late George and Ellie Warburg, donors of the Snetzler bureau organ and Kirckman harpsichord. Simon Daniels Director, The Handel House Trust

LS Julian, thank you for creating this delightful programme – and how exciting that you recorded it in Handel’s own home, where he composed some of his most celebrated works. I’m sure the great man would have been thrilled to know that, some 300 years on, 25 Brook Street is still ringing with music. For those that haven’t yet visited the house, can you describe Handel’s music room? Perhaps you felt his presence while you were playing? JP Who knows, Lucie! It certainly was inspiring to record music by Handel and his friends in a room drenched in musical history. This is not only where Handel frequently entertained his guests to meals and no doubt showed off his art collection, but also where he conceived and rehearsed much of his music – and where some say he even threatened to throw a diva out of a window when she refused to sing an aria that didn’t give her enough scope for extravagant ornaments! Yet the room itself is disarmingly modest; a rectangular space measuring 5.9 metres across, 4.7 metres deep and 2.6 metres high, that goes across the front of the house on the first floor above what would have been Handel’s shop. That said, its wooden floor, wall panels and shutters make it an effective soundbox for early keyboard instruments. We hope that our recording captures the room’s intimacy – as well as the atmosphere of the slightly larger one

downstairs where we recorded the organs – while allowing for some air around the sound. Given that both rooms face the street, we decided to record from about 6pm when we hoped that there would be less traffic noise. We envisaged endless delays and stocked up on chocolate to get us through three nights. But we were blessed. Our recording sessions were done by 2am (!) and our supplies didn’t run out. Did we feel Handel’s vibe or just a sugar rush during the sessions? Possibly both … LS Tell us something about the various different kinds of keyboards we can hear on this recording – are they similar to those that Handel owned? What are they like to play, and how easy is it to switch from one to another for different pieces? How far do the instruments Handel owned suggest his personal musical tastes – were any of them new inventions or considered rather ‘cutting edge’ at the time? JP This recording features an impressive array of instruments that were popular both in private and in public during Handel’s day. In terms of his musical tastes, the refined harpsichord by Bruce Kennedy is somewhat similar to an instrument made by Hans Ruckers in 1612 that Handel apparently used so much that its keys were ‘hollowed out like spoons’. By contrast, the opulent harpsichord

Julian Perkins: An interview with Lucie Skeaping from Joseph Kirckman’s workshop, with its generally plummy sound, might have been considered ‘cutting edge’ for its time. It has a range of registrations including the socalled ‘Lute’ stop that creates a nasal sound because the strings are plucked very close to the tuning pins. Used here in Scarlatti’s Sonata K 4, I’ve never understood why it isn’t called a ‘Nazard’. It’s fascinating to think that Kirckman’s harpsichords were sometimes combined with John Snetzler’s organs to create claviorgans. Snetzler’s bureau organ might have been used by Handel in his oratorios. There’s a lovely ‘chiff’ to the sound which encouraged me to explore different articulations. In fact, each of these instruments inspired me to explore its unique sound world. I relished the challenge of adapting my technique in response to the different instruments and working with Oliver Sändig, the keyboard technician, to ensure that each of them was match-fit. In terms of switching between instruments, uppermost in my mind was the need to differentiate my touch between the plucked instruments (harpsichords and spinet) and the wind ones (organs). The former often require the player to hold notes over so as to create line and sonority, while such an approach on the organ – with its sustained tones – would create a disastrous smudge.

LS These days we might dub 25 Brook Street the ‘Headquarters of Handel Inc.’ The house served as both a home and workspace and was often filled with guests and musical colleagues; one report tells us that in 1749 ‘a hundred’ musicians came to the house to rehearse for the Fireworks music – which, if accurate, could have been quite a squash! I do wonder what Handel’s affluent neighbours made of all the coming and going – not to mention any musical sounds that may have wafted out through the window on to the street. Tell us about some of the celebrated singers and players who came to rehearse at the house.

whole house as a musical Petri dish, with Handel trying out some of his latest pieces to discerning friends. These included his near-neighbour Mary Delany, who memorably described Handel as ‘a necromancer in the midst of his own enchantments’ when she attended a rehearsal of his opera Alcina.

JP The music room would have seen a veritable catwalk of celebrated singers ranging from the castrato Senesino to the English tenor John Beard. Perhaps a surprising visitor was the singer-actress Susannah Cibber, given that she was the sister of Handel’s younger rival Thomas Arne. An unexpected omission is the castrato Farinelli, who never worked with Handel. As for players, the Castrucci brothers (Handel’s principal violinists) and the continuo cellist Nicola Francesco Haym (who was also frequently Handel’s librettist) probably came to rehearse, and maybe the oboist-composer Giuseppe Sammartini tried out some of his orchestral solos before tutti rehearsals at the King’s Theatre. I like to imagine the

JP I do love Mercier’s informal portrait of Handel with an arm resting on a harpsichord that is probably by William Smith – a copy of which features here. But the portrait is surprising. Instead of the assertive gaze of a renowned entrepreneur in his mid 40s, we encounter a contemplative – even vulnerable – person; a workaholic, portrayed a few years before he drafted Messiah in a mere three weeks, when even his beloved food was left ‘untouched’. It’s interesting how Handel’s wig is replaced by a cap – though seeing his bald head reminds me how different fashions were then. Can you imagine how uncomfortable it would have been to have had your head shaved so as to wear a canvas wig? Ouch!

LS Handel’s portraits generally show him in a tight-looking coat and wig. The Handel House recently was able to borrow a rarely seen portrait by Philippe Mercier, possibly from the 1730s, in which Handel wears a loose-fitting long scarlet gown; perhaps that was his dayto-day working attire?

LS Did he sometimes work late into the night? And how much help did he get from an assistant in terms of writing parts, adding bass lines, adding the lyrics and so on? JP The fact that Handel became blind in the last decade of his life suggests to me that he often worked late into the night. Those flickering candles surely played havoc with the eyes over time. But Handel relied on assistants well before then – initially John Christopher Smith Snr, his friend from Halle University. His son, John Christopher Smith Jr – known as Christopher – gradually took over this role, though in a more musical capacity as he was also a productive composer in his own right. Having been Handel’s composition pupil, he became his amanuensis, comparable perhaps to Franz Süssmayr and Mozart or Robert Craft and Stravinsky. In addition to writing out orchestral parts and possibly completing inner ones, Christopher also acted like an agent. Perhaps he also helped Handel secure subscribers and sold tickets and music on the ground floor. LS Eighteenth-century keyboards can be susceptible to changes of temperature. Would Handel have had a tuner on call 24/7, much as we might call an emergency plumber? And do we know anything about the pitch the instruments would have been tuned to?

JP Musicians were probably more hands-on with their instruments in Handel’s day than they often are now. Indeed, Henry Purcell’s first job at the age of fourteen was as an instrument technician and tuner as opposed to a player. We know that Handel was on good terms with the harpsichord-maker Burkat Shudi, so it’s possible that he or one of his minions popped round if Handel needed some new harpsichord strings or a fresh supply of feathers from which to make the plectra that pluck the strings. Though, to my knowledge, surviving receipts don’t seem to make provision for somebody specifically to tune keyboard instruments either at home or for public events. Pitches and tuning systems are moving targets that are perhaps akin to dialects in Switzerland, where a recognised group of languages are often spoken quite differently even within the same district. When one talks of so-called Baroque pitch today, it often means A1=415Hz (approximately a semitone below ‘modern’ pitch, which is A1=440Hz). However, Handel’s tuning fork is at pitch A1=422.5Hz. This pitch is rarely viable for wind and brass players today so, assuming Handel used it, authenticity has its limits. At any rate, we’ve opted to hover mostly around 415Hz on this recording: we feel that these instruments speak best at this pitch. Let’s hope that Handel would have agreed!

LS Yes, and surely Handel would have agreed to including a contemporary piece in your programme. JP I hope so – especially given his curiosity for discovering new music in his own day. Rhian Samuel’s ‘Sarabande’ forms part of her Baroque-inspired Isolation Suite that was originally written for piano during lockdown, and I’m very grateful to her for adapting it to the harpsichord for me. The movement’s rhapsodic lilt seems particularly well suited to the harpsichord. LS We know Handel was rather fond of his food and drink – indeed, he was famously ‘portly’ in later life; perhaps his only exercise was going up and down the house’s narrow oak staircase or a brisk walk round the corner to St George’s Church! The faithfully restored kitchen in the basement of 25 Brook Street is very realistic with its spit and pots and pans; I suspect he left any food preparation to his servants, although it’s not hard to imagine him creeping down in the night for a secret snack! What refreshments might Handel’s guests have been served?

JP I think it’s fair to say that Handel was only a vegetarian between meals. His meaty diet probably included a lot of game, served up by his live-in chef, possibly the singer Gustavus Waltz. Though I wonder whether he went in for the Georgian speciality of mice on toast! One assumes that Handel was a generous host, but an account claims that he once kept sneaking away from table during dinner – in a supposed fit of inspiration – only to be discovered secretly indulging in ‘such delicacies as he had lamented his inability to afford his friend’. Unfortunately for Handel, his ‘friend’ was the painter and set-designer Joseph Goupy who then caricatured him as The Charming Brute. This story adds weight to the possibility that Handel suffered from binge-eating and became quite chubby in middle age. Evidence also suggests that he suffered from lead poisoning, as this metal was then used to preserve and flavour wine and lined the pipes that provided water to Brook Street. But what was one to do in an age when even gin was considered safer than water, as immortalised by William Hogarth in Gin Lane?

What isn’t in doubt is that Handel’s home was a mecca for his musical family of friends, colleagues and rivals. Handel himself seems to have been a sociable workaholic. I imagine him as an open-hearted, irascible yet mostly kind man who loved a good gossip between his bursts of intense musical activity. Today, both his adult house in London and his childhood home in Halle evoke a genius whose music continues to enrich so many of our lives. © 2024 Lucie Skeaping Lucie Skeaping presents BBC Radio 3’s Early Music Show. She was founder-director of The City Waites ensemble. Her books include the award-winning Broadside Ballads of 17thCentury England (Faber Music) and Singing Simpkin and other Bawdy Jigs (UEP).

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