Hyperion Records

Suite No 4 in E minor evades convention, beginning not with a prelude but with a fully developed fugue longer and more complex than many of the fugues Handel published as independent pieces. The subject, launched on repeated crotchets, flows into passagework intermittently riddled with chromatics and with quite far-ranging modulations. But this big piece is succeeded by a French suite consisting of the fundamental sequence of allemande, courante, sarabande and gigue, all more than usually French in feeling and ornamentation.

from notes by Wilfrid Mellers © 1995