"Bates lavishes evident care and affection on the score... he directs his expert period band with spirit and imagination" Gramophone Magazine

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For its harmonia mundi USA debut, La Nuova Musica and David Bates present a true rarity: the original 1712 version of Handel's second London opera, Il Pastor Fido.

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This was, in fact, a world premiere recording — the 1712 version had never been recorded before, since most performances and recordings favour Handel's much richer 1734 revision and expansion of the score. The 1712 original is a slighter, more intimate piece: scored as though for a private entertainment rather than the public stage, it sits somewhere between opera and serenata, an Arcadian tale of muddled hearts and Cupid's darts that several critics have noted lacks the drama of Handel's earlier Rinaldo or the psychological depth of Agrippina. What it does offer, largely undisguised by later revision, is Handel's instrumental writing in its original colours — not least the six-movement overture for woodwind and strings that opens the recording.

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The cast brought together for the project was a young one, drawn substantially from singers who would go on to become regular collaborators with LNM: soprano Lucy Crowe as Amarilli, alongside Anna Dennis, Katherine Manley, Madeleine Shaw, countertenor Clint van der Linde and bass-baritone Lisandro Abadie. It was recorded at Temple Church, London, in August 2010, and released by Harmonia Mundi USA in 2012.

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Critical response was warm. Gramophone called the recording welcome, and praised the spirit and imagination of his direction and the freshness of his young cast's voices. BBC Music Magazine likewise admired Bates's evident love of Handel's instrumental textures, singling out the overture's woodwind writing, and described the effect of Temple Church's resonant acoustic as spa-like in its serenity.

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As LNM's first release under its new Harmonia Mundi USA partnership, Il Pastor Fido set the template much of the ensemble's subsequent discography would follow: a genuine musicological rediscovery, paired with a young, since-notable cast, and a critical reception that praised the playing and the scholarship even where the underlying repertoire divided opinion.