A very nice first review of Olwen Foulkes’s debut album on BCR, Directed by Handel.
Olwen Foulkes’s playing is excellent, producing a beautifully controlled and mellifluous tone which she combines with an impressive sense of musical detail as well as the longer melodic phrase. She also provides well-written programme notes describing the music of Handel’s theatre musicians.
Although this is clearly a CD focussed on the recorder soloist, the other four musicians (Nathaniel Mander, harpsichord, Carina Drury, cello, Tabea Debus, bass recorder, and Toby Carr, theorbo) get a very fair share of the honours. As well as her role as a continuo player, cellist Carina Drury is the expressive soloist in Geminiani’s Sonata in F (H.107). Nathaniel Mander provides very effective harpsichord continuo as well as his solo performance of John Blow’s Mortlake Ground.
Full copy here.