SONGS BY HENRY PURCELL

Victorious Love

 

Sweeter than roses

The fatal hour

When first Amintas sued for a kiss

The Plaint

They tell us that you mighty powers above

Man is for the woman made

From silent shades

Music for a while

Now the night is chas’d away

If music be the food of love

Thrice happy lovers (An Epithalamium)

The bashful Thames

I attempt from Love’s sickness to fly in vain

Oh! fair Cedaria

Fairest isle

O solitude

If love’s a sweet passion

The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation

An Evening Hymn

 

Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Laurence Cummings (harpsichord & spinet), Elizabeth Kenny (archlute / theorbo), Anne-Marie Lasla (bass viol), Sarah Sexton (violin I), Andrea Morris (violin II), Jane Rogers (viola)

 

Two song anthologies published shortly after the death of Henry Purcell in 1695 have inspired this highly varied programme. Quoting the liner notes by lutenist Elizabeth Kenny, ‘recital programmes put together from the anthologies by the original purchasers would have mixed the genres without inhibition. Generally people sang what they liked and played what they liked, in any order they liked.’

 

It was this free-and-easy approach which incited soprano Carolyn Sampson and her co-performers to combine settings with accompaniments ranging from a single lute or spinet to string quartet with continuo. In Kenny’s words: ‘Seen from modern historically-informed or “authentic” perspectives a not-quite-familiar Purcell emerges, a composer of Gebrauchsmusik, flexibly scored and flexibly interpretable: virtuosic if the performers wish, innocently affecting if not.’ Including some of Purcell’s most well-loved songs as well as lesser-known gems, this collection has as its motto a line from the opening song Sweeter than roses: ‘What magic has victorious love’.

 

As one of today’s most magic – not to say victorious – singers, whether on the opera stage or in the concert hall, Carolyn Sampson’s previous appearances on BIS have earned her high praise, for instance in American Record Guide (“Her tone is extraordinarily beautiful: natural, warm and unforced, with almost superhuman vocal athleticism”). On this her first solo recital disc for BIS she is supported by some of the finest musicians in the field, including Anne-Marie Lasla (bass viol), Elizabeth Kenny (lute) and Laurence Cummings (harpsichord).      

 

BIS SACD BISSACD1536