Essential Handel

Essential Purcell The "Essential" Purcell? Well, you could get a bunch of critics to argue about that for a few days, but in the meantime, here is a sampler of highlights from the King's Consort's three admirable Purcell series: the Complete Odes and Welcome Songs, Complete Anthems and Services, ...	Essential Vivaldi: 20 Greatest Masterpieces	Essential Mozart: 32 Of His Greatest Masterpieces	Essential Bach It is not possible to fit 36 Bach masterpieces on two CDs, so what Essential Bach does is present individual movements from across a range of the composer's work. The anthology is clearly aimed at the newcomer, and the absence of booklet notes to put the music in context is disap...	Essential Tchaikovsky
Essential Beethoven	The King's Consort Collection	The King's Consort Baroque Collection	Essential Rachmaninov	Chopin: Favorite Piano Works

Robert King deserves to be famous in America, too
Robert King and his King's Consort have made dozens of recordings, establishing themselves in London as a pre-eminent Baroque group. They benefit greatly from King's unflagging energy and musical insight. Twenty years ago you couldn't say that the period movement had attracted the best musicians and conductors. That situation has changed radically, and this sampler CD from King's complete recordings exhibits first-class playing throughout. Baroque singing is at a high level, too, but you couldn't say that his singers are of Met or Royal Opera House quality--even so, they are very good. As an indicator of the strides that period performance has made, this is an eye-opening CD, but it's also engaging for the general listener, like me, who only dips into Handel's many, many operas and oratorios occasionally.

Bargain-priced first-class overview
This is a great CD for beginners, but also for those who already have a few Handel CDs. So often samplers have all the favourites which you already have on other CDs. But this set has a few well-known tracks, such as Zadok the Priest, See the Conqu'ring Hero Comes and La Rejouissance from The Fireworks, but mostly wonderful music, superbly played which is not extremely well known. Highly recommended.