Description

“The Author’s extraordinary Talent in all sorts of Musick is sufficiently known, but he was especially admir’d for the Vocal, having a peculiar Genius to express the Energy of English Words, whereby he mov’d the Passions of all his Auditors.” By these words, Henry Playford introduced the first volume of his anthol¬ogy of Purcell’s songs, aptly titled Orpheus Britannicus and published in 1698, three years after the composer’s untimely death. They still hold true today, for rarely since Purcell has a composer succeeded to distil in music such beauty and emotion from the English language. Along with examples of Purcell’s “extraordinary Talent” in instrumental music, this disc contains some of his most remark¬able solo vocal pieces in English, for that most angelic of voices, the countertenor.