Already in its LP for this Fireworks Music was one of the best performances available (certainly the best of the period-instrument versions), and on Compact Disc it makes a vivid impact. Steering a middle course between the vast instrumental armies which seek to re-create the original open-air atmosphere of the 1749 celebrations (with the horns baying across London's Green Park) and decorous concert-hall approaches, Hogwood secures grandeur without grandiosity, and there is plenty of excitement in the more jubilant movements. RF, reviewing the LP, would have liked more horns, but I didn't personally feel any lack in this regard: I do agree with him, however, that the properly exuberant drums do tend to screen out the bass line in La rejouissance. The F major Suite from the Water Music, here ending not in that unsatisfactory way with the D minor Allegro but with the Hornpipe better known in its later D major variant, is played in a brisk and lively, perhaps rather less committed fashion: the baroque oboes add a distinctive colour, as do the natural horns, whose intonation, if not entirely impeccable, is probably better than that of their predecessors on the Thames barge.'