Album: Ensemble Zefiro Handel: Venus & Adonis (Sony/Deutsche Harmonia Mundi)

Baroque specialists Ensemble Zefiro follow up last year's acclaimed recording of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks with this further selection of his cantatas and sonatas along similar lines, opening with a delightful "Trio Sonata in B flat major Op. 2 No. 3, HWV 388" in which the two oboes dance delicately around the central supporting strut provided by the bassoon and violone, in an ornate fugal manner doubtless derived from Corelli.

Soprano Gemma Bertagnolli joins Zefiro for measured performances of the pantheistic German aria "Meine Seele hört im Sehen", the Italian cantata "Mi palpita il cor" and the English cantata "Venus and Adonis".

DOWNLOAD THIS Venus and Adonis; Trio Sonata in B flat major Op. 2 No. 3, HWV 388; Meine Seele hört im Sehen