Purcell on EMS - 29th March

[ardcarp]

L'Acheron play Purcell

Highlights of a concert given in Lausanne last January by the Belgium-based ensemble L'Acheron. The group, directed by Francois Joubert-Caillet, explores the consort music of Henry Purcell, performing Fantasias and In Nomines.

I just love Purcell's work in this genre. I think it was discussed on The Forum quite recently, but I can't remember where.


PS Hope they'd finished 'exploring' it in time for their concert performance!

[ardcarp]

Hope they'd finished 'exploring' it in time for their concert performance!

Lucy didn't do any 'exploring'....simply let the concert run. Fine by me. Playlist on EMS website.
I think these fantasias are extraordinary, not just in themselves, but because Purcell (1655 -95) chose to write in this idiom at all. Bear in mind:

Byrd c1540 - 1623
Monteverdi 1567 - 1643
Lully 1632 - 1687

I think Jordi Savall* sums it up well.


Purcell’s fifteen Fantazias have come down to us as a manuscript kept at the British Museum, most of whose pieces are dated. As they would not have aroused any interest at the time, the young composer did not even attempt to have them published, and they only appeared in print, edited by Peter Warlock, in 1927! This unique collection of pieces of from three to seven parts, a true “sum” of polyphonic thinking, to which only Bach’s Musical Offering and Art of Fugue may be compared, are the product, incredible as it may seem, of a very young composer of twenty-one at the beginning of his all too-short career. Written during the summer of 1680, they bring two centuries of uninterrupted instrumental tradition in England to a crowning conclusion.




If you love false relations and English cadences, you'll love this!

This wasn't all the Fantasias BTW. Mainly the 4-part ones.

*Jordi's daughter Arianna Savall features in Monday's Early Music Now.