Handel’s group of nine German arias, composed in London in the mid 1720s, is unique in his vocal output. They are not big display pieces, and they are not excerpts from operas or oratorios. In fact, we don’t know much about the purpose behind their composition. Catriona MacLeod’s excellent notes make a good case for these having been written for private in-home performances, like the trio sonatas with which Chandos fills out this disc. These are significantly more intimate and inward-looking arias than much of Handel’s vocal writing, reflective in nature—and also chamber-like in the musical relationships between voice and instruments.

Handel's "nine German arias" (he wrote other arias in German, but this is a discrete group) were written in the mid-1720s, long after the composer left his native Germany for Italy and then booming Great Britain. It is not known why he should have written music in German at that late date, and the pieces have a quietly contented tone that sets them somewhat apart from almost everything else in Handel's oeuvre. The texts are by Hamburg poet Barthold Heinrich Brockes, whose so-called Brockes-Passion had already been set by Handel a decade earlier.