On track: Fireworks and the flamenco spirit

By WILLIAM DART

I've always felt that half the fun at a Wagner concert is the frisson of counting the extra horns. Le Concert Spirituel's new Handel CD has a line-up of nine, giving their all alongside 24 oboes, 14 recorders, 14 bassoons and nine trumpets, not to mention a contingent of strings that would more than satisfy the Master of Bayreuth.

It's spectacle time. Herve Niquet and his musicians have come up with the sort of sound that Handel might well have dreamed of, set in enough ambience to make your lounge sound as if it were the original Green Park, where the Fireworks Music was first heard.

There are some delicacies, such as the rather dainty Fireworks Bourree, but delicacy is clearly not a priority. Even in the gentler moments, the oboes have a rascally raucous edge and those lusty strings show that they know the difference between an elegant Gigue and a rollicking Jig.

The authentic mean-tone tuning makes it raw and rustic to homogenised ears and trills are sometimes little more than a bluster.

The horn whoops in the first Minuet from the Water Music would make the foundations of Valhalla shake, while the thundering timpani that open the Fireworks Music might well hold their own against a battery of Cook Island log drums.

For Baroque splendour at its most exciting, this CD couldn't be bettered.

Chatting with Paco Pena last month, I finally had my chance to ask an expert whether I was the only one catching the spirit of flamenco in the harpsichord sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti.

He agreed and turned out to be a Scarlatti fan. So, if you missed the guitarist's concert last month, I'd recommend Ladders to Heaven, Colin Tilney's new CD of Scarlatti Sonatas as recompense. Listening to Tilney dash off the F minor Allegro assai, one could well imagine a castanet obbligato fitting in rather neatly in there somewhere.

These are wild, wonderful works given crisp, idiomatic performances and beautifully caught in this Dorian recording. Don't worry about buying a stairway to heaven, there's more fun to be had climbing Tilney's ladders.

* Handel, Water Music & Fireworks (Glossa GCD 921606, through Ode Records) Colin Tilney, Ladders to Heaven (Dorian DOR 93253, through Elite Imports)