Jane Chapman - The Lady's Banquet, Vol. 1: Aires From the Opera Curiously Set (1995)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 491 Mb | Total time: 74:59 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Collins Classics | # 14562 | Recorded: 1995
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue & Log) ~ 491 Mb | Total time: 74:59 | Scans included
Classical | Label: Collins Classics | # 14562 | Recorded: 1995
A curious appendix in a couple of the Handel Gesellschaft volumes offers ornamental harpsichord arrangements by William Babell of airs from Handel operas. He in fact published a large number of versions of extracts from popular operas of the time, and these gained wide circulation both in this country and abroad in collections aimed at genteel young ladies (for whom a modest competence at the keyboard was a social asset). The transcriptions from Handel's Rinaldo (1711) are so elaborately smothered in brilliant scales, arpeggios and other embellishments that Hawkins averred that ''few could play the lessons but himself'', and Burney acidly commented that Babell ''acquired great celebrity without the assistance of taste''; but the versions of works by other composers that had been produced in London in 1709 and 1710 are much less ornate and were clearly designed for players of modest attainments.