Keyboard Works for Solo Instruments

The music historian Sir John Hawkings recorded that his friend Handel's keyboard improvisations "stole on the ear in a slow and solemn progression; the harmony close wrought, and as full as could be possibly be expressed; the passage concatenated with stupendous art, the whole at the same time being perfectly intelligible, and carrying the appearance of great simplicity." Such fecund spontaneity generated the few published pieces Handel wrote specifically for the keyboard. The first set of ...