During the 1990s, Collegium Musicum 90 and Simon Standage released several volumes of Albinoni concertos, which proved popular with critics and public alike. The concertos were released as discs of single oboe concertos, double oboe concertos, and string concertos. In this re-issue on the Chaconne label, the concertos are presented in opus number order, showing the contrasting colours and tonalities of the concertos as they originally appeared.

Here is another fine recording of Telemann’s magnificent Thunder Ode, a work inspired by the catastrophic earthquake that destroyed Lisbon in 1755. It is coupled with one of the composer’s most jubilant cantatas, and both still impress as works that should be heard much more often, perhaps in lieu of an overplayed composition by Handel or Bach. They are surely in that league. This CD, re-issued in Chandos’ “Chaconne” line, faces inevitable comparison with the performances on Capriccio, conducted by Hermann Max, although the couplings are different. Max’s Thunder Ode is given a whole CD to itself, while his cantata recording contains two additional, and magnificent, Telemann compositions.

Albinoni might be described as a specialist in the medium of the Concerto a cinque, of which he composed 54, published at intervals during almost half his productive life. The first six appeared in his Op 2 (1700), together with six sonatas from which they inherited some structural features, and were followed in 1707 by the 12 of Op 5. They were 'halfway houses' on the road to the violin concerto per se as we know it – and as Vivaldi established it four years later.Virtuoso passages for a solo violin appear only en passant in flanking movements and 'symmetrically' in the Adagios of Nos 3, 6, 9 and 12. Each Concerto is in three-movement form and all the finales are fugal, as they are in the Op 2, though in their simplicity they sound rather like rondos.

The concerto, such a familiar feature of the modern concert landscape, seems a simple thing in its opposition of individual and group. But its early history is not so simple; composers had to find structures that would support contrasts between one or more soloists and an orchestra. The "classic" Baroque concertos of Corelli actually represented a simplification of experiments carried out by earlier composers, the Bolognese Giuseppe Torelli central among them. Torelli is usually associated in Baroque listeners' minds with a few trumpet concertos, two of which (labeled sinfonias) are heard here. The short concertos for one or two violins (mostly six or seven minutes long, for three movements) are rarer but very attractive. They don't have the clean symmetries of the Vivaldian concerto, instead exploiting various ways of breaking up a movement into solo and tutti. Although short and essentially compact, each movement has an aspect of free imagination that is nicely brought out by the veteran English early music conductor and violinist Simon Standage, who joins with several other well-known soloists from Britain's historical-performance movement.

This, Vivaldi's very first opera, was premièred in Vicenza in 1713 and was an instant hit. The story is a relatively uncomplicated one by the standards of Baroque opera, of amatory pretences and misunderstandings: it has been admirably summarised by Eric Cross (who has edited the work) as a 'light-weight, amoral entertainment in which the flirtatious Cleonilla consistently has the upper hand, and gullible Emperor Ottone (a far from heroic figure) never discovers the truth about the way he has been deceived'. The score proceeds in a succession of secco recitatives (with just a very occasional accompagnato) and da capo arias – which the present cast ornament very stylishly.

Handel's Apollo e Dafne is a difficult work to put in context. Completed in Hanover in 1710 but possibly begun in Italy, its purpose isn't clear, while, as secular cantatas go, it's long (40 minutes) and ambitiously scored for two soloists and an orchestra of strings, oboes, flute, bassoon and continuo. But this isn't just a chunk of operatic experimentation: it sets its own, faster pace than the leisurely unfolding of a full-length Baroque stage-work, yet its simple Ovidian episode, in which Apollo's pursuit of the nymph Dafne results in her transformation into a tree, is drawn with all the subtlety and skill of the instinctive dramatic genius that Handel was.

Handel's music is never more winsome than when it's written for special occasions, not least operas. Several of the items in this programme are arias, but they aren't sung. Like today's musicals, though not for calculated commercial reasons, some became what we would now term pops, and Handel reworked them as instrumental pieces, so no liberty has been taken here in presenting them in that form. The charm of this music hasn't escaped the notice of others in recording studios, but it has never been more persuasively captured than it is by Collegium Musicum 90. Other recordings exist of the complete operas and some of the individual instrumental items, but Arminio is represented by only one aria; there's nothing run-of-the-mill about the fugal subject of the Overture, or its treatment, and the Minuet is winsome and light of step.

Handel ‘pops’ as selected by his 18th-century publisher, Walsh. Seven complete overtures, five glorious arias, ‘the song parts’ (vocal lines) given variously to oboe, bassoon and violin. CM90 is on cracking form, instrumental soloists reflecting every nuance of the absent words – an unqualified delight.

–George Pratt

Chandos’s set of Handel’s op 6 ’Grand Concertos’ here reaches completion in appropriately superb style As before, Simon Standage paces Handel’s inexhaustible inventive music with unerring judgement and a good instinct for embellishment This is the version to have if you want period instruments …"

–Bernard Jacobson

On the second disc, except, in the sombre colours in the splendid G minor Concerto (No 6) – here with oboe and the agreeable addition of a theorbo to the continuo – there's a general air of cheerfulness that's most engaging. The fugue in No 7 is wittily buoyant, the Allegro in No 9, borrowed from the Cuckoo and the nightingale Organ Concerto, could scarcely be more high-spirited, the final Passepied of No 6 and the Hornpipe of No 7 are spring-toed; and Standage's feeling for convincing tempos is nowhere better shown than in the long Musette of No 6, which in other hands can drag. Phrasing everywhere is shapely, and the surprise chords that interrupt the flow of No 8's Allemande are admirably 'placed'.

The first disc of the ever-fresh Op 6 Concertigrossi includes the oboe parts that Handel later added to Nos 1, 2, 5 and 6. The performances are brimful of vitality, and the clean articulation and light, predominantly detached style give the music buoyancy and help to bring out Handel's often mischievous twinkle in the eye. Speeds are generally brisk, with boldly vigorous playing, but Standage's team can also spin a tranquil broad line. Dynamics throughout are subtly graded, and except in one final cadence ornamentation is confined to small cadential trills.

By comparison with the ambitious, sometimes pioneering products of the last musically active decade of his life (1755-1765) much of Telemann's chamber music is conventional in language if not always in form. Nevertheless, we should guard against any assessment which views it as merely fluent. Telemann's chamber suites and cantatas, solo sonatas, trios, quartets and songs almost invariably carry the hallmark of a composer whose understanding of the voices and instruments for which he is writing is both imaginatively practical and technically informed.

Five lesser-known pieces (one orchestral suite and four instrumental concertos) from the over-abundant pen of Georg Philipp Telemann are presented in this second collection by the British ensemble Collegium Musicum 90, here directed by its co-founder, gifted violinist Simon Standage, whose earlier recordings with the English Concert and the Academy of Ancient Music are the guarantors of his classiness.

Recorded in 1990 at Rosslyn Hill Chapel, Hampstead (London), this beautifully produced CD contains six lesser-known works for violin(s) by Germany’s most prolific 18th century composer, Georg Philipp Telemann, who was, during his lifetime, considerably more famous (and more in demand) than any of the Bach dynasty. But as Nicholas Anderson points out in his rather brief introduction to this music, “Telemann did not altogether avoid in his own music those features which he criticised in others; sometimes his harmonies seem sparse, his passagework perfunctory.” Telemann was a great musician, but the violin “seems to have been that in which he was least fluent”. It is also well-known that Telemann’s facility in composing has gained him a reputation for producing quantity rather than quality – a reputation which, on the whole, is undeserved.

Hickox has a wonderful feel for this music…In short I would put Hickox at the top of the list… Seasoned collectors may well have the major Haydn masses well covered, but if you want the less-known early works, along with interesting fillers, all superbly done and neatly put in a single box, you’ll want this as well. There is splendid music here, full of vitality as only Haydn could express it.

–American Record Guide