Organ Concertos No.1, No.5, No.14, No.13 "Cuckoo And The Nightingale"

Released in 1968 under the His Master's Voice label, this recording brings together the organ concertos of Georg Friedrich Händel as performed by Simon Preston and the Bath Festival Orchestra. The collaboration was led by the renowned conductor Yehudi Menuhin, whose work with the Bath Festival Orchestra during this period was highly regarded for its precision and stylistic clarity, aiming to capture the baroque vitality of Händel’s original organ compositions.

The album reflects the mid-century British movement toward historically informed performance, emphasizing the unique dialogue between the organ and the orchestral arrangement. Simon Preston, a distinguished organist and choirmaster, was instrumental in bringing these concertos to a wider audience, and the recording was widely praised at the time for its technical balance and the bright, articulate character of the performance. Catalogued as ASD 2352, it remains a notable example of the high-fidelity classical releases that defined the HMV label's catalog in the late 1960s.