Virginia Knight: >I haven't yet found a record of a visit by a great non-British >composer to my home town of Bath. Sir Thomas Beecham was given to mining what were then lesser-known works of Handel and arranging them into suites for orchestra. One such was a ballet called Love in Bath, or The Great Elopement. Any suggestion of untoward goings-on during ablutions is quickly dispelled by the realisation that the setting is the city of Bath. In these days of faithfulness to the score, it's very out of date, but I remember finding it very attractive in my early days of exploring CM. As the notes point out, "a good proportion of it is pure Beecham", but only in the arranging sense: it's not like Kreisler's compositions "in the manner of." I'm not sure whether this ever made it to CD, but I'd suggest it's no more unfaithful to the spirit of the composer than the Handel/Harty Water and Fireworks Music. All of which makes me wonder whether Handel ever ventured that far west. Richard Pennycuick [log in to unmask]