Concerto Grosso in F major Op.3 No.4

Unlike the Op.6 set of concerti grossi – which Handel himself compiled with great care in emulation of Corelli’s much admired Op.6 – the Op.3 set was assembled without the composer’s co-operation and possibly even without his knowledge. In finding enough concerto material to complete the set of six, the London publisher John Walsh, whose enterprise this was, had to do a certain amount of barrel scraping. Even so, while in certain cases he put together movements from disparate sources, he did find some entirely authentic compositions. The present Concerto Grosso in F, for example, was written as an overture for the orchestra’s benefit-night performance of Handel’s opera Amadigi in 1717. It consists of a conventional French overture (with a slow introduction and a fugal Allegro) in F major, an elegantly melodious Andante in the same key, an enterprisingly contrapuntal Allegro in D minor, and a pair of minuets in F major. While there is no concerto element in the overture, where the oboes and bassoon double the violins, a solo oboe has a prominent part in the Andante and possibly a short cadenza in the adagio transition to the next movement, which also features solo violins. The second of the two minuets is particularly attractive for its bassoon colouring.