KEY POINTS:
Christopher Hogwood and his Academy of Ancient Music led many of us through the cool, evergreen glades of Early Music in the 70s and 80s.
The academy gave us our first taste of artists like Emma Kirkby, Stephen Preston, Anner Bylsma and Nicholas McGegan making composers like Purcell
and Vivaldi sound anew.
This year the 20 players of the academy have new musical director Richard Eggar taking them through a sumptuous recording of Handel's Concerti Grossi Opus 3.
Unlike the composer's Opus 6 set, these works come with a few historical issues and Eggar lays them all out in a most readable essay, talking of musicological head-scratching, juicy private stories and concertos being cobbled together.
Yet harmony rules throughout. Oboes and bassoons gambol rustically in the finale of the first concerto while liquid flute tones float through the third.
A delightful fugato in this concerto looks ahead two centuries to the clear crispness of Copland's Appalachian Spring.
Every flourish and scale is gracefully accounted for, with a bonus of an Allegro, written during the young Handel's time in Rome.
There is Corellian sweetness here, along with a spot of ornamental dueling between Eggar's harpsichord and Pavlo Beznoiusk's violin.
The music seems to breathe with a life of its own, caught to the last falling sigh, by an excellent Harmonia Mundi recording.
Hummel might be a lesser talent than Handel, but the London Mozart Players' new collection of his ballet music is agreeably civilised.
The grand ballet of the 1812 Sappho von Mitilene has ambitious turns for its prima ballerina, graduating from cor anglais lament to fire-and-brimstone tactics inspired by Gluck.
Mystery enshrouds The Magic Castle, but while the ballet's history and plot remain unknown, the 20 minutes of its music provide unaffected joy.
The disc ends with Hummel at his very best in a tradition set by Haydn and Mozart with a line-up of lively waltzes.
Each runs at around 30 seconds, rounded off by a coda that allows trumpets and drums to join the celebrations, and conductor Howard Shelley to drum up our enthusiasm for more of the same ... soon.
* Handel, Concerti Grossi Opus 3 (Harmonia Mundi HMU 807415);
* Hummel, Ballet Music (Chandos CHAN 10415)
* Both through Ode Records.
