Suite No. 3 in D Minor

With its fizzing skyrockets up and down the full breadth of the keyboard, the opening “Prelude” to Handel’s Suite No. 3 in D minor has all the zest and energy of a recorded improvisation. But this is one of those movements which can all too easily run away with itself. Perhaps Handel intended a lesson here: the fundamental importance of understanding where the music is actually going, and carefully underpinning it—however showy—by emphasising the underlying harmonic structure. As if to rein in the wayward fingers of the virtuoso, Handel follows this with a very controlled fugue, and then a rather serious “Allemande” and “Courante”. After that he abandons the pretence of writing a traditional, well-behaved suite and offers us a set of five variations on a sublime “Air”—richly ornamented, just like that of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The tuneful finale is one of Handel’s favourite concerto-like movements, and indeed he later orchestrated it for his Organ Concerto Op. 7 No. 4.