Geminiani : Douze sonates. London Handel Players.

   in Early Music Today (Mar, 2013)
This is an incisive study in CD form of Geminiani’s compositional process, and will be of particular interest to students of the musical ‘recycling’ widely practised by Handel and his contemporaries. The Op. 1 sonatas appear as solo violin versions (1716 and 1739), as woodwind or harpsichord solos and in arrangements for various configurations of instruments by the composer himself and others. The London Handel Players present a cross-section of these, giving several of the sonatas in different readings, ordered consecutively for ease of comparison. However, this should not be a disc merely for specialists: the playing is charming, with solid rhetorical drive from Laurence Cummings at the harpsichord and warm, …