Few if any readers will be without a recording of Handel’s Water Music, so the appearance of a new version may not excite much curiosity. But here, Handel is but half the story, since Robert King and his King’s Consort have pitted the composer’s aquatic talents against those of his contemporary and lifelong friend, Telemann. The popular story that Handel performed his Water Music in order to mollify his one-time employer, the Elector of Hanover, when the latter arrived in London as George I may be only partly true. However, it is certain that some of the music was in existence by 1717, when it was performed from a barge on the Thames. Telemann’s score was written six years later in 1723 for the centenary of the Hanseatic city’s admiralty and was played as Tafelmusik during the celebratory dinner.
Telemann cannot match Handel’s ‘occasional’ splendour, nor does he deploy the sheer variety of instrumental colour that makes the three, or at least two suites of the London Water Music so unfailingly engaging. Yet, within the confines of an altogether more modest design – ten movements as against Handel’s 19 – Telemann enlivens his suite with a wider range of dance rhythms which inject vitality into and provide depictive charm for evocatively subtitled marine vignettes. These are a delightful feature of the score, calling forth musical responses from Telemann’s pen that are richly endowed with fantasy and, on occasion, humour.
King shows strong form in each of the works and is complemented by an excellent band. Woodwind instruments are to the fore in both, with additional brass in the Handel. These departments are notable for their homogeneous, corporate sound and for the discreet but imaginative ornamentation practised where appropriate. There is no shortage of accomplished recordings of the Handel work but sympathetic versions of the Telemann are few and far between. Too many of them are spoilt by interminably ponderous and footslogging performances of the noble Overture with which the Suite begins. King gets it right as he does much else here. Only in the opening Overture of the Handel did I feel his approach lacking in vitality and grandeur. Otherwise this is a rewarding programme, imaginatively realized and played with panache. Strongly recommended.'