The new recording of Handel’s Alcina from Marc Minkowski, Les musiciens du Louvre and a rather starry line up of soloists is very good and quite interesting.  It’s very complete.  As far as I can tell all the ballet/dance music is included and so are all the Oberto scenes and all his arias.  In all the staged performances I’ve seen (live or video) one or both are usually heavily truncated and I have seen versions where Oberto doesn’t feature at all.

There was one thing that puzzled me a bit.  The relatively large (40 or so) orchestra includes trumpets and bassoons but not horns.  I think this is unusual but maybe someone more knowledgeable might comment?  In any event there’s some really good playing, quite often at very fast tempi in the instrumental sections.  Minkowski also gets a really wide range of colours from the orchestra.   A good example is the low strings in “È gelosia”. Continue reading →