In his notes to this recording, the conductor Reinhard Goebel draws attention to the final item, the cantata Il pianto di Maria, partly as ''the major work in this issue'', partly as not being by Handel at all. Though its attribution has long been suspect on stylistic grounds, as stated in Grove, the identification of the composer as Giovanni Battista Farrandini is a very recent piece of work, that of four scholars whose findings were published in the Gottingen Handel-Beitrage only this year. Goebel instances a number of characteristics as Handelian, the dramatically abrupt ending with a recitativo accompagnato for example. But much else is really somewhat crude, or at least musically simple-minded, as when a ''relentless drumming bass'' persists throughout the aria which is described as the ''musical emotional heart of the work''. Ferrandini, an admired composer in the mid-eighteenth century, was the writer of numerous operas and cantatas, none of them represented in the current record catalogues. The Marian cantata whose misattribution has secured him a place at last suggests that he may not deserve the oblivion into which he has nevertheless understandably fallen.
Of the others, Haec est regina virginum, a courtly aria with instantly memorable melody, has been recorded previously by Emma Kirkby. Ah! che troppo ineguali and its fine B minor aria belong to the same period (the autograph is dated 1708) and are thought to be part of a larger cantata imploring the Virgin to bring peace out of the War of the Spanish Succession. Donna, che in ciel di tanta luce splendi is a full-length cantata and the masterpiece in this recital. The introductory Sinfonia captures attention imperatively with its grandeur and turbulence. Then the succession of recitatives and arias, unfailingly alive with dramatic imagination, provides superb opportunities for the singer, all of which are taken here with well-grounded eagerness.
The singing is indeed admirable in beauty of tone, technical accomplishment and vividness of expression. Von Otter is a fine witness in support of Goebel's belief that as the castrati are extinct we do better with a female soprano than with a falsettist (that is his term for the alternative), and we should not require her to sound like a boy. I can accept all that. What I can't be doing with is all this lurching of the string players on their original instruments: all these hairpins, opening out, thrust forward then pulled back again till the notion of standing upright and moving evenly has become a dim memory. The very first bars of all will illustrate: the thought of them makes me sea-sick.'