Handel: Complete Flute Sonatas

Landmark works of Baroque chamber music given a 21st-century twist.

The extent to which George Frideric Handel's flute sonatas 'belong' on the flute is an open question. Some sonatas were composed with the violin in mind, and then arranged by Handel's London publisher, John Walsh, ever alert to a commercial opportunity. Others were probably conceived for recorder and basso continuo, and then transposed for the different register of the flute. Most of them were written around the 1720s, but some date from rather earlier, so far as we can tell.

Even more than his contemporaries such as Bach, Handel was an assiduous reuser and recycler of his own material, and thus the notion of early and late style in this music, and an evolution between them, becomes somewhat moot. Not entirely, however, for there is a discernible movement away from Italian and towards French models of rhetoric in the sonatas, just as the oratorios develop an increased richness of harmony and economy of gesture during the decades of Handel's English period.

To accompany this new recording, the flautist Lorenzo d'Antò has supplied invaluable chapter and verse for each sonata in his booklet essay. He also brings them alive in his partnership with the guitarist Michele Di Filippo, with the aim of rediscovering 'these antique masterpieces, and observing them from a new and modern perspective.' Thus the basso continuo lines, usually encountered on a harpsichord or combination of cello, lute and keyboard, have been mapped on to the guitar. This is a practice with many honourable precedents, dating back to Handel's own time.

Lorenzo D'Antò graduated from the conservatoire in Rome in 2017. While at a relatively early stage in his career, he is already principal flute of the orchestra of the Arena di Verona. He has also performed as a concerto soloist and recitalist in festivals and venues across Italy and Switzerland. He is partnered here by Michele Di Filippo, a guitarist born in 1994 who is also active as a composer.