Handel: Complete Solo Sonatas

Contents Handel: Sonata in B flat major for oboe and continuo, HWV357 Handel: Sonata in G major for violin and continuo, HWV358 Handel: Sonata in D Minor for violin and continuo, HWV359a, Op. 1 No. 1 Handel: Sonata in E minor for flute and continuo, HWV359b, Op. 1 No. 1b Handel: Sonata in G minor for recorder and continuo, HWV360, Op. 1 No. 2 Handel: Sonata in A Major for violin and continuo, HWV361, Op. 1 No. 3 Handel: Sonata in A minor for recorder and continuo, HWV362, Op. 1 No. 4 Handel: Violin Movement in A Minor HWV 408 Handel: Andante for violin & continuo in A minor, HWV 412 Handel: Oboe Sonata in f major, HWV 363a Handel: Sonata in G major for flute and continuo, HWV363b, Op 1 No 5 Handel: Sonata in G minor for violin or oboe and continuo, HWV364a, Op. 1 No. 6 Handel: Sonata in G minor HWV364b Handel: Sonata in C major for recorder and continuo, HWV365, Op. 1 No. 7 Handel: Sonata in C minor for oboe and continuo, HWV366, Op. 1 No. 8 Handel: Sonata in D minor for recorder and continuo, HWV367a, Op. 1 No. 9a ‘Fitzwilliam III’ Handel: Flute Sonata in B minor, Op 1 No 9b, HWV367b Handel: Sonata in G minor for violin and continuo, HWV368, Op. 1 No. 10 Handel: Sonata in F major for recorder and continuo, HWV369, Op. 1 No. 11 Handel: Sonata in F major for violin and continuo, HWV370, Op. 1 No. 12 Handel: Sonata in D major for violin and continuo, HWV371, Op. 1 No. 13 Handel: Sonata in A major for violin and continuo, HWV372, Op. 1 No. 14 Handel: Sonata in E major for violin and continuo, HWV373, Op. 1 No. 15 Handel: Flute Sonata in A minor, HWV 374 Handel: Recorder Sonata, HWV375 Handel: Flute Sonata in B minor, Op 1 No 9b, HWV367b Handel: Sonata in B flat major for recorder and continuo, HWV377 ‘Fitzwilliam I’ Handel: Flute Sonata in D major, HWV 378 Handel: Sonata in E minor for flute and continuo, HWV379, Op. 1 No. 1a Handel: Recorder Sonata in D Minor, HWV 367a: VI.

In the course of his productive life as a composer, Georg Friedrich Händel has not only written countless masterpieces for orchestra, opera and the church. The music world owes numerous outstanding works in the field of chamber music to the native Saxon and later Londoner of choice. Handel has written 16 solo sonatas for the recorder, transverse flute, oboe and violin or the viola da gamba, whereby there are also revised second versions of some sonatas, which to this day pose the question to musicologists as to which version is the original. The Italian early music ensemble Il Rossignolo has recorded for him for the first time the entire solo sonata opus with all its surviving versions and variants. A total of 27 sonatas and three individual movements were recorded in Italy under the direction of harpsichordist Ottaviano Tenerani with Marica Testi (transverse flute), Martino Noferi (recorder), Florian Deuter (violin) and gamba player Paolo Biordi as soloists.

“These wonderful sonatas, with their diverse instrumentations, keys, harmonies and forms, offer the listener a completely new perspective on the cornucopia of expressive, aesthetic and poetic expressiveness of Handel’s world,” said the musicians of Il Rossignolo about this unique recording project. The sonatas for solo instrument and basso continuo were written between 1710 and 1728 and are today known as Handel’s Opus 1. Handel had probably composed the majority of the sonatas for advanced amateur musicians from the English, but also from the Dutch and French upper classes. And apart from the three-movement “Hanoverian Sonatas” HWV 357 and 358, which were probably written for professional musicians, most sonatas follow the four-movement model of the “Sonata da chiesa” coined by Arcangelo Corelli.