Ever since the “authentic/original instrument” recordings of Baroque repertoire began coming out in the 1970s, there have been two main approaches. One took into consideration the fact that early instruments have some problems in terms of intonation and phrasing, with the musicians doing everything they could to overcome them and produce a sound that is beautiful to modern ears. The other approach has been to revel in those technical deficiencies and do everything to exaggerate their idiosyncratic sound. It’s rather as if a clarinet player today would decide that since the instrument is unique in possessing three registers, the differences in timbre and breaks between registers should be exaggerated; fortunately today’s clarinet players instead work assiduously at minimizing those register breaks.The Linde Consort recording of Handel’s Water Music is firmly in the latter camp, most noticeably in terms of the raw and raucous sound produced by the French horn players. It’s a wild and wooly sonority that to my ears sounds either like the musicians had never played 18th-century French horns before or that they got drunk at a frat party and decided to articulate and slide into notes like a trombone playing Tiger Rag. It quickly becomes grating and tiresome. I suppose there are those who feel that if old-style instruments are going to be played, by golly they’d better sound antiquated and technically deficient so that we never forget for an instant that this is an “original instrument” ensemble. It is interesting to hear once, but more than the most articulate proponent of modern instruments, it vividly demonstrates why those instruments were modernized in the first place.