Some of the Best and Worst of Baroque

The fabled 1974 recording of Handel’s “Water Music” by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and his Concentus Musicus Wien, too long absent from the catalogue, is back at last.

Recordings this awful should always be available: not to provide cautionary lessons, since no one is likely to follow Harnoncourt’s perverse examples, but to provide a measure of relief from the excess of sanity that pervades so much of what is in an average month’s new releases.

And in Teldec’s mid-priced “Das alte Werk” series (93668) this “Water Music” is cheaper (and better recorded) than the Spike Jones reissues to which it has been unfavorably compared.

First, for those who have forgotten, there’s the sound of the Harnoncourt tutti, strangely evocative of something large and ungainly crashing into a chain-link fence. Then there are the legendary horn trills, in effect the most obscene of raspberries. And less amusing things, such as the occasional somnambulistic tempo, some surpassingly sour oboe playing, and several numbers that aren’t weird or poorly executed at all. But don’t let that put you off.

There’s nothing laughter-evoking in the companion pieces, a pair of Handel organ concertos, so vivaciously, imaginatively--and not eccentrically--presented by soloist Herbert Tachezi, Harnoncourt and the gang that one should regard the “Water Music” as an aberration.

There is, however, an infinite variety of irrational musical behavior, as Harnoncourt shows in his brand-new edition of Handel’s deep, dark and grandiose Milton-based oratorio, “Samson” (Teldec 74871, 2 CDs).

The performance is not without its blandishments: Roberta Alexander’s proud, flawlessly sung Dalila, the powerful Manoa of Anton Scharinger, Alistair Miles’ thunderous Harapha, and Anthony Rolfe Johnson displaying his customary intelligence and more than usual dramatic punch in the title role.

Add to this the sumptuous and agile work of Vienna’s Arnold Schoenberg Chorus and you would seem to have the makings of long- overdue recorded justice to one of Handel’s great inspirations.

But no. First, there’s alto Jochen Kowalski’s alternately overheated and impossibly fey Micah and that man Harnoncourt demanding--and receiving--laggardness and density from the Concentus Musicus when mobility and transparency should be the watchwords.

Worst of all is the conductor’s evenhanded cutting of expendable recitatives and crucial arias, including among the latter one of the work’s most familiar numbers, “Why does the god of Israel sleep?”

Rhetorical question: Is there any other conductor extant who is allowed as much interpretive latitude, to put it kindly, as Harnoncourt?

*

Some of his odd notions about tempo turn up again in a low-voltage reading of Vivaldi’s familiar “Gloria,” with the Arnold Schoenberg Chorus wasting another fine effort, and a snooze-inspiring performance of Pergolesi’s lovely “Stabat Mater” (Teldec 76989).

Pergolesi’s gentle masterpiece is much more convincing in the hands of an ensemble new to this listener, Les Violons du Roy, under the direction of Bernard Labadie, a Quebec-based string band that uses modern instruments, but with a sure command of the niceties of period style (Dorian 90196).

Catherine Robbin employs her creamy mezzo to exquisite effect both in the Pergolesi, where she is joined by an appropriately sweet-toned soprano, Dorothea Roschmann, and in that other ineffably lovely, consoling “Stabat Mater,” Vivaldi’s, which is roughly contemporaneous with the Pergolesi setting.

The program is filled out by a Vivaldi rarity, the motet, “In furor giustissimae irae,” which sounds very much like one of the composer’s better concertos, but with a soprano voice taking the part normally assigned to the solo violin.

It’s an effective, attractive piece, particularly in the fiery reading by Roschmann, whose voice assumes unexpected weight here. Highly recommended.