Since 1952, Fenton House in Hampstead, London has been home to one of the most important collections of early keyboard instruments in Europe. Cared for by the National Trust of Great Britain, the collection was assembled during the early decades of the twentieth century by Major George Henry Benton Fletcher, a man of extraordinary vision. Major Fletcher was an ardent advocate of the value of playing early music on period instruments. For a new catalogue compiled by Mimi S. Waitzman, along with an accompanying CD of the Fletcher collection, the Practitioners of Musick supplied Charles Frederick Abel’s Overture in B-flat Major (1759) which was played by Terence Charlston on a Shudi and Broadwood harpsichord of 1770.
