All credit to Hervé Niquet for celebrating the 15th anniversary of his group, Le Concert Spirituel, by assembling a hundred musicians at the Arsenal de Metz last September to produce what is claimed as ‘the first historical recording’ of the Fireworks Music and Water Music. We have had many versions on period instruments – I have listed the latest issue above – but till now only one recording of the Fireworks Music has attempted to assemble period instruments in the numbers that Handel is known to have had originally.

That is the 1989 version for Hyperion by Robert King with the King’s Consort, but he was content with 62 wind, brass and percussion players, where Niquet, as in the Water Music, adds massed strings too. Sir Charles Mackerras’s flamboyant recording of the Fireworks Music using vast wind forces has reappeared on Testament with great success, but that dates from the days of Handel on modern instruments.

Niquet, as he explains in a note, goes further than most of his rivals, not only in assembling these numbers, but in applying early performance techniques ‘without any concession’. When he reports that the nine horn players ‘performed their parts without “correcting” the natural intonation of their instruments,’ with mean-tone temperament imposed on the whole orchestra, it made me apprehensive that the results would be painful to the modern ear. Happily not so.

The rawness of brass tone – much greater than with the King’s Consort – is so well controlled that I find it tickles the ear delightfully, while the actual performances have a flamboyance that one can liken to Mackerras’s, even though the readings are otherwise very different. Helped by atmospheric recording, one has a vivid impression of a grand ceremonial celebration, far more so than with King.

The massed woodwind players too (24 oboes, 15 flutes and recorders and 14 bassoons) add to the weight and tang of the sound, and though there are only two percussionists listed, they are balanced to give maximum impact, with a spectacular timpani cadenza in the ‘Overture’ to the Fireworks Music before the main Allegro bursts in, sounding gloriously uninhibited. The bass drum and timpani in the ‘Gigue’ which ends theG major Water Music Suite have similar panache.

The string sections (10.10.8.8.6) are comparably large, but inevitably on gut strings their playing is less prominent, counterbalanced by such elaborations as the sparkling little cadenza for solo violin that links the ‘Prelude’ and ‘Hornpipe’ of the D major Water Music Suite. As one would expect, fast speeds predominate, sometimes so fast that they sound breathless, as in that ‘Hornpipe’ and the following ‘Minuet’. One marvels at the articulation of the wind and brass players in coping, yet the combination of speed and weight, together with even stressing of the beat, prevents these performances from having the lightness or charm one finds with Pearlman at very similar speeds. Next to Niquet in the Fireworks Music Robert King and the King’s Consort are more controlled at more conventional speeds, never so hectic, but the less reverberant acoustic, even while it clarifies the sound, makes the result less grand, less ceremonial. King has the four Coronation Anthems for coupling instead of the Water Music. First in the field or not, Niquet’s is a fine achievement.