Handel: Authentic, Far From Minimal

It was only a decade ago that part of the competition among members of the period performance movement involved how few musicians could be employed in a Baroque concerto: It became routine to hear them played one instrument to a part, assuring linear clarity (given sufficiently skilled players)--and a smaller budget.

That minimalist force seems to have spent itself, and period orchestras are growing again, as their performing styles become less concerned with merely being different from those of modern-instrument, less-informed practitioners.

Take the latest recording of that most majestic collection of concerti grossi, Handel’s Opus 6, in which Christopher Hogwood conducts the stylish musicians--25 strings strong, plus lute and harpsichord--of the Boston-based Handel & Haydn Society (L’Oiseau-Lyre 436 845, three CDs).

Whether that many players are needed is beside the point. More important is that Hogwood and his colleagues have produced a superior set of performances: by turns noble and sprightly, and without the overlay of questionable historical froufrou, e.g., the exaggeratedly short bow strokes, overly precipitate phrase-endings and hectic tempos employed during an earlier phase of the movement, when its participants seemed as intent on being outrageous as stylistically smart.

The conductor responsible for some of the major outrages of the early years of this antiquarian era, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, has settled into a somewhat dowdy respectability, but his earlier efforts keep returning, sometimes to set teeth on edge all over again, sometimes to delight.

Falling into the delight category is a gorgeous-sounding reissue (Teldec 91188, two CDs), at mid-price, of the Handel Organ Concertos, Opus 4 and Opus 7, originally released in 1975 as part of the Telefunken’s “Das alte Werk” series.

Here, instead of teasing rhythms and showing how whiny the old instruments can sound, Harnoncourt goes with Handel’s gloriously proud, energetic flow, drawing firm-toned, polished work from his Concentus Musicus Wien--which in the 1970s was more likely to produce sonic scruff than splendor--and showcasing his imaginative harpsichordist, Herbert Tachezi, in the role of equally imaginative organ virtuoso.

Handel’s concerto grosso style was based on the model created by Arcangelo Corelli during the first decade of the 18th Century. And Corelli’s seminal works--the 12 concertos of Opus 6--are also newly available in dedicated, lively readings by London’s Brandenburg Consort, directed by violinist Roy Goodman (Hyperion 66741, two CDs).

Goodman uses an ensemble of 16 strings, less than half the number Chiara Bianchini and Jesper Chistensen did in their monstrously inflated recent edition for Harmonia Mundi, a few more than Nicholas McGegan and his Philharmonia Baroque, also for Harmonia Mundi.

This latest version is handsomely executed, if without quite the dancing liveliness of McGegan’s.

Goodman’s approach might be called middle-of-the-road, now that period style is available in such interpretive variety that it can be subjected to the sort of categorization we employ when comparing Mahler symphonies from such differing viewpoints as those of, say, Leonard Bernstein, Christoph von Dohnanyi and Bernard Haitink.

In Handel’s ever-popular “Musick for the Royal Fireworks,” a new German Baroque band, La Stravaganza Koln, downplays the side-drum racket that is among the score’s abiding but cheaper thrills in favor of the composer’s lyric subtleties. Until the final measures of the concluding minuet, that is, where drums and trumpets--the latter employing a kind of fanciful ornamentation we seldom hear these days--cut loose deliriously.

La Stravaganza’s appealing Handel program (Denon 79943), directed by concertmaster Andrew Manze, further includes the very grand “Alexander’s Feast” Concerto Grosso, the delectable B-flat Organ Concerto and the Suite in D for trumpet and strings.