Georg Friedrich Händel

Handel's Memories - A selection from Grand Concertos op. 6

Al Ayre Español

Label: Challenge Classics
Format: SACD hybrid
Barcode: 0608917254822

Catalog number: CC 72548
Releasedate: 18-05-12

“He takes other men's pebbles and polishes them into diamonds”, the British composer William Boyce used to say of G.F. Handel. It could not be more true when we observe the use Handel makes of these and other loans. Handel used material of his composer-collegues who were for the most part his friends and also made newly composed music. Al Ayre Espanol with this performance makes us aware of the sheer beauty of this music, which always turns into gold in the hands of master Handel: new or borrowed! Grand concertos grandly performed!

Grand Concertos grandly perfromed!
Famous early music ensemble with the acclaimed Eduardo López Banzo as it's leader !
Musicological rigor, performance excellence and with the main purpose of giving new breath to music from the past, making them appear as recent compositions!
The name of the ensemble was inspired by the title for a guitar Fugue of the Calanda (Aragón) composer, Gaspar Sanz.
In Sanz's "Fugue" he indicated the musician to play with "ayre español", that means "in the Spanish way"and this is exactly what this ensemble does
Have been awarded with the “Premio Nacional de Música” in 2004 by the Spanish Ministry of Culture
Al Ayre Español has performed around the world: Berlin Konzerthaus, Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, Opéra Comique and Théatre des Champs Elysées in París, Palau de la Música in Barcelona, Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid, Palau de la Música in Valencia, Hamburg Musikhalle, Concertgebouw in Amsterdaam, Library of Congress in Washington, Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussel etc.
Al Ayre Español has made recordings for the Almaviva, Fidelio, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi and Harmonia Mundi labels, with Ambroisie/Naïve and now also Challenge Classics,thesecond album!
Super Audio (Hybrid)!

Something new and something borrowed. In the days that Handel lived, it was common to use an existing melody and make it your own. Handel's Grand Concertos contains a surprising quantity of newly composed material, as well as some borrowings, such as the memories or musical anecdotes, written with intense lyricism and certain sentimentality, previously absent from his instrumental music.
His “operatic” Concerto No. 8, written in the ill-natured, though also lovely, tonality of C minor, is one of the most dramatic in the collection, and concurrently possesses one of the most interesting structures. It starts with a movement based on the main motif of an allemande – “a German piece” – by Johann Mattheson, published in his Pièces de clavecin (London, 1714, the same year as Corelli’s concerts).

The Componimenti Musicali by Gottlieb Theophil Muffat, with whom the German composer exchanged music during the 1730s, provide Handel with some ideas from which he builds formidable orchestral movements in these concertos. “He takes other men's pebbles and polishes them into diamonds”, the British composer William Boyce used to say of him. It could not be more true when we observe the use Handel makes of these and other loans. Al Ayre Espanol with this performance makes us aware of the sheer beauty of this music, which always turns into gold in the hands of master Handel: new or borrowed. Grand concertos grandly performed!