This double hybrid SACD set is the second recording by Al Ayre Español and its conductor Eduardo López Banzo for Challenge Classics, and features a selection of six of Handel’s Twelve Grand Concertos, opus 6, otherwise known as Concerti grossi. Last year their debut release for the label was a highly-regarded disc of sacred cantatas by José de Nebra.

The musical director Eduardo López Banzo was born in Zaragoza in 1961. In the operatic field he is considered to be one of the most important specialists as regards Handel’s music for theatre. Eduardo López Banzo founded Al Ayre Español in 1988, and was awarded the Spanish National Music Prize in 2004, thanks to more than twenty years of musicological rigueur and performance excellence.

Handel’s Concerti grossi, Op.6 or Twelve Grand Concertos, HWV 319-330 were first published in London by John Walsh in 1739. Taking the older concerto da chiesa and concerto da camera of Arcangelo Corelli as models, rather than the later three-movement Venetian concerto of Antonio Vivaldi favoured by Johann Sebastian Bach, they were written to be played during performances of Handel's oratorios and odes. Despite the conventional model, Handel incorporated in the movements the full range of his compositional styles, including trio sonatas, operatic arias, French overtures, Italian sinfonias, airs, fugues, themes and variations and a variety of dances. The concertos were largely composed of new material, and are amongst the finest examples of the baroque concerto grosso.