John Eliot / English Baroque Soloists Gardiner - Handel: Water Music (LP)

When this album was recorded in 1980, the English Baroque Soloists ensemble had only been founded for barely two years. Indeed, John Eliot Gardiner first created the Monteverdi Choir in 1964, then the Monteverdi Orchestra in 1968 which played on modern instruments. In the late 1970s the orchestra transitioned to period instruments and became the English Baroque Soloists. The first concert under the new name was in 1977 at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music, although the orchestra was not officially formed until 1978. The Water Music Suites is one of English Baroque Soloists’ first recordings. The instrumental level is remarkable, Gardiner’s aesthetic being already made of accuracy, instrumental perfection, intonation and dynamism – it was a question of breaking down all the prejudgments that could exist on the baroque at that time.

Further celebrating John Eliot Gardiner’s 80th birthday is this LP release of a recording made in 1980. At the time, Gramophone magazine praised it for making Handel’s Water Music “sound as delightful as it can ever have sounded”. The three orchestral suites, bubbling with energy and invention, were first heard in 1717 after King George I commanded a waterborne concert on the River Thames.