Neville Marriner's 1976 account of the Covent Garden version of the score (1743), with the Academy and Chorus of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and soloists Elly Ameling, Anna Reynolds, Philip Langridge, and Gwynne Howell, is positively plush-sounding but nicely animated. I'd love to have this kind of string tone for, say, the Dvorák Serenade, but for Handel it may be just a bit much. --Ted Libbey