Handel organ concertos may not be what you associate with the gilded fittings of the Vienna Musikverein, though apparently performances of them by Karl Richter were popular there about 50 years ago. Back then the recently built organ – the hall’s third since 1872 – was not well liked, and in 2011 a new organ by the Austrian firm of Rieger was installed. The intention was to create something that could fulfil the primary function of a symphonic instrument – with all that implies in matters of force, colour and tone – but also summon the lightness, clear textures and crisp attack required for Baroque repertoire. How well that has worked overall I cannot say, but Martin Haselböck seems happy enough with the result to have conceived this project in which, he says, ‘the colourful sound of the Musikverein organ with the orchestra’s historical instrumentarium can add a special touch to this magnificent music in this very special venue’.

In essence this means that the performances, while undoubtedly in good Baroque style (the period Wiener Akademie are excellent), offer the latent thrill of a large instrument in a large hall. The palette is thus that little bit more luxurious than you will encounter in the otherwise more flamboyant recording with chamber organ by Richard Egarr (Harmonia Mundi, 8/08, 10/09), and the acoustic context more generous and somehow more urbane-seeming than English-church-organ performances by the nimble-fingered Paul Nicholson (Hyperion, 3/98) and the more delicately expressive Simon Preston (Archiv, 10/84). Though none of the sounds seem overbearing or downright un-Handelian, I can’t think that I have heard such splendour in the close of The Cuckoo and the Nightingale or the opening of Op 7 No 1, anything so exotic as the clarinet-like sounds of the movement that follows, or such glittering echoes as in the Allegro così così of Op 7 Op 4. Surely Handel would have smiled to hear them!

Soloist duties are shared between Haselböck (Op 4) and his former pupil Jeremy Joseph (Op 7), and of the two it is Joseph who seems more able to extract clarity, bounce and joy from the great machine. By comparison, Haselböck is smoother but a little staid, even ponderous, and with some uncertainties of tempo in solo passages too. Joseph’s playing also seems better integrated with the orchestra, but since Haselböck is listed as the director throughout, we cannot be sure which of them earns the credit for that, or for the threatening stygian gloom at the start of Op 7 No 4 and the gracefully drawn mini-drama that ends Op 7 No 6. But if for some this might not seem the stuff of a definitive recording, it is certainly fun to listen to.