Herein are gathered the six recorded solo sonatas from L'Ecole d'Orphee's two-LP set of Handel's woodwind works in that genre, played as beguilingly as you are likely to hear them. Pickett decorates the lines aptly, never letting his virtuosic fingers get the better of him (or the music), Lucy Carolan plays crisply and with modest sufficiency for her task, while Susan Sheppard, recorded in truthful balance, provides a model of good style; those rapid semiquavers referred to by RF don't always emerge without some sense of strain, but such cliff-hanging adds to the feeling of urgency.
The numbering of the sonatas (1-6) follows the ordinal sequence of the HWV numbers, but the playing order, interchanging Nos. 3 and 4, seems as unhelpful as it is unnecessary in this splendid issue.'