In many respects, 1956 is not a very long time ago, but as far as the performance of Handel is concerned, it’s another age. It is now almost impossible for the educated ear to listen as, say, Alec Robertson and Trevor Harvey could do when they wrote their reviews of this recording between its first appearance and its reissue in June 1979. TH could say then that Beecham had ‘rethought the whole work – in my opinion to its great advantage’, and AR (on the first stereo reissue, 9/63) happily recommended it to ‘all but purists’. But by ‘rethinking’ is really meant reordering and reorchestrating, with numerous omissions; and in that respect we are (almost) all purists nowadays. It isn’t just ‘purists’, for instance, who, confronted with a work in three acts, will object to the omission of the second (the one with the famous judgement regarding the baby and its disputing mothers), even if some of its numbers are incorporated later.

There’s no doubt that if you want an authentic recorded version of Solomon you buy Paul McCreesh on Archiv (John Eliot Gardiner picks and chooses almost as subjectively as Beecham). But suppose you want an exhilarating experience which has Solomon as its first cause, then you’ll find it here and in excelsis. Suppose also that, out of sheer devilry perhaps, you feel it would be a treat to hear in Handel orchestral and choral sound with flesh on its bones; and suppose you’ve had enough of recessed choirs and dutifully ‘integrated’ soloists; and suppose, if you’re absolutely honest about it, you’d rather have a good baritone (as John Cameron certainly was) rather than a male alto (even if he is Andreas Scholl) singing Solomon, and don’t particularly like the idea of a woman either (even if she is the excellent Carolyn Watkinson, with Gardiner)… Well, you have the answer here.