Suite No. 1 in A Major

Thanks to the ambition and imagination of record companies, concert promoters and opera festivals, we probably know Handel better today than at any time since the 18th century. Our Georgian ancestors would surely have been impressed—and surprised, too, by our priorities: because they knew Handel above all as a virtuoso performer and improviser on the keyboard, and his Eight Great Suites for the harpsichord of 1720 would once have been played in every self-respecting musical household in the country. Five suites open with Preludes, but the opening movement of Suite No. 1 in A Major is the only French-style “unmeasured” prelude: basically, a do-it-yourself-improvisation-kit of broken chords and sequences which allowed players to begin their suites with a semi-improvised flourish. The following “Allemande” offers grandness and scale, the “Courante” thrills to the harmonic richness of the moving inner parts and the final Italian style “Gigue” scampers.