Well, I have no shortage of recordings of this, one of the most popular works of baroque music. I have performances conducted by Fennell, Gardiner, Hogwood, Marriner, Maier, Pinnock, Savall, Stokowski, and Warchal, and I’ve probably heard a dozen others. Most listeners divide them into two categories: 1) recordings using original period instruments, or an approximation thereof; 2) recordings using twentieth century instruments in a standard concert format. I’m not going to sneer at the latter group. Handel was as pragmatic a showman as music ever produced, and he would have been perfectly happy hearing Stokowski’s wonderful and totally inauthentic version, though he might have told Marriner to give his performance a little more zetz. But on the whole, I prefer the period instrument versions, and of those, I’d pick Jordi Savall’s for my desert island music collection. This version has zetz-aplenty. Read more »