Indispensible recordings 03.08.2024. Proms Composer 3: Purcell

[Pulcinella]

Saturday 3 August 2024
1415
BBC Proms Composer: Henry Purcell

Joseph McHardy joins Andrew to choose five indispensable recordings of composer Henry Purcell, who is featured in the 2024 BBC Proms, and explain why you need to hear them.

Purcell was master of operatic stage works such as Dido and Aeneas and The Fairy Queen, sacred and secular cantatas, and intimate chamber consort works harking back to Dowland.

[smittims]

As with Messaien, I'm not really a Purcell fan but there are certainly recording in his works I find indispensible, and it's no coincidence that they involve Thurston Dart and Anthony Lewis, two interpreters I never tire of hearing:

The Oiseau-Lyre Fairy Queen and King Arthur
The Mackerras Indian Queen
Come ye sons of art with Alfred Deller , John Whitworth and Bruce Boyce
If we're limited to five,I'm torn between Fretwork's Virgin Classics CD of the viol fantasias and the Argo/S.John's They that go down to the sea in ships with Inia te Wiata brought in specailly to sing that remarkable bass solo.

[Pulcinella]

I'd go for this Simon Preston Christ Church anthology, in which (I think) David Thomas (bass solo in They that go down) was not 'brought in' but already 'existed' in the choir.

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7930675--henry-purcell-choral-works

I see that the Presto listing includes a Nunc Dimitus, a new one on me.

[oliver sudden]

I’ve always been puzzled why David Thomas didn't record more of the music Purcell wrote for John Gostling. It would have suited him, and he it, brilliantly.

[Mandryka]

I'm not a great lover iof Henry Purcell but these recordings seem as close as it gets to "indispensable" for me

Purcell/Stokowsky Dido's lament - Egarr
Fantasias -- Rose Consort
Fantasias - Ekkehard Weber
Fantasias - Harnoncourt
Fantasias -- Savall
Fantasias -- Voix Humaines
G major double organ voluntary -- Leonhardt
Trio sonatas - Les Nièces de Rameau
Music for a While -- Deller
Purccel/Sasha Waltz Dido and Aeneas -- Attilio Cremonesi
Purcell/Mark Morris Dido and Aeneas -- Mark Morris

There's also this -- but really, I think indispensable is a bit too strong for it.

[oliver sudden]

Spontaneously interrogating myself, my indispensables as far as Purcell is concerned seem to be more about isolated jewels than about larger-scale pieces… Paul Elliott singing Tis Nature’s Voice for JEG, James Bowman singing Sweeter Than Roses with Britten, Deller’s Music for a While, Munrow’s Love’s Goddess sure was Blind, Parrott’s Hail Bright Cecilia.

There’s a tendency with commentators writing about British opera composers to call their favourite subject the best composer of opera in English since Purcell. I find that a bit silly. Most of Purcell’s operatic pieces were half spoken drama and the music on its own doesn’t really add up. And Dido and Aeneas for me is one utterly sublime song at the end of some OK stage music, not some indisputable eternal pinnacle of large-scale Anglophone music drama.

(Braces for impact.)

[Mandryka]

Spontaneously interrogating myself, my indispensables as far as Purcell is concerned seem to be more about isolated jewels than about larger-scale pieces… Paul Elliott singing Tis Nature’s Voice for JEG, James Bowman singing Sweeter Than Roses with Britten, Deller’s Music for a While, Munrow’s Love’s Goddess sure was Blind, Parrott’s Hail Bright Cecilia.

There’s a tendency with commentators writing about British opera composers to call their favourite subject the best composer of opera in English since Purcell. I find that a bit silly. Most of Purcell’s operatic pieces were half spoken drama and the music on its own doesn’t really add up. And Dido and Aeneas for me is one utterly sublime song at the end of some OK stage music, not some indisputable eternal pinnacle of large-scale Anglophone music drama.

(Braces for impact.)

There's the Charon scene. I saw a Jonathan Miller production where it was really special.

[smittims]

I too think it foolish to claim 'the best' (or worse, 'greatest') ; it over simplifies the matter; different composers wrote different operas, and different kinds of opera , in different times for different circumstances. It's better, I think, to appreciate what each has to offer on his own terms.

I wonder if Purcell's 'semi-operas' (or 'ambigues' as they were once called ) will ever be revived successfully on stage. Attempts have been made, but always the play fans get impatient woth all that music , while the music fans wish the actors would shut up so we can get on with the songs and dances. But then , it's not that long ago that Handel and Vivaldi's operas were thought unstageable today, so it might happen.

Benjamin Britten made a controversial concert arrangement of about two thirds, I think, of the Fairy Queen for Aldeburgh and the Proms and afterwards (naturally!) recorded it for Decca. It was much cirticised by Purcell fans for rearranging drastically the order of the music, Britten's argument being that if you're not performing the original play the order of the music lask cohesion,so it is better to re-order it .

[oddoneout]

I too think it foolish to claim 'the best' (or worse, 'greatest') ; it over simplifies the matter; different composers wrote different operas, and different kinds of opera , in different times for different circumstances. It's better, I think, to appreciate what each has to offer on his own terms.

I wonder if Purcell's 'semi-operas' (or 'ambigues' as they were once called ) will ever be revived successfully on stage. Attempts have been made, but always the play fans get impatient woth all that music , while the music fans wish the actors would shut up so we can get on with the songs and dances. But then , it's not that long ago that Handel and Vivaldi's operas were thought unstageable today, so it might happen.

Benjamin Britten made a controversial concert arrangement of about two thirds, I think, of the Fairy Queen for Aldeburgh and the Proms and afterwards (naturally!) recorded it for Decca. It was much cirticised by Purcell fans for rearranging drastically the order of the music, Britten's argument being that if you're not performing the original play the order of the music lask cohesion,so it is better to re-order it .

Another Fairy Queen production, but which seemed to have managed to please, from what I remember of the crits and feedback in the local rag. The writer of this article also has something to say about "festivals"(Proms) and taking a chance on non-opera venues and locations, which are even more pertinent now than at the time.

https://www.overgrownpath.com/2007/05/operas-other-ring.html

[smittims]

Thanks for that. I'm familiar with the outside of the Yarnouth Hippodrome but never thought what goes on inside.

[richardfinegold]

My introduction to Purcell was Walter (now Wendy) Carlos Funeral Music for Queen Anne from A Clockwork Orange and then a David Munro Come Ye Sons of Art.
The staged works are tough to take in total, neither fish nor fowl, somewhat analogous to Berlioz works that are in limbo between Symphony and Oratorio. Excerpts from Romeo and Juliet have a long history of concert life and to me arrangements of Purcell that salvage the music ought to as well

[Pulcinella]

My introduction to Purcell was Walter (now Wendy) Carlos Funeral Music for Queen Anne from A Clockwork Orange and then a David Munro Come Ye Sons of Art.
The staged works are tough to take in total, neither fish nor fowl, somewhat analogous to Berlioz works that are in limbo between Symphony and Oratorio. Excerpts from Romeo and Juliet have a long history of concert life and to me arrangements of Purcell that salvage the music ought to as well

That might be the answer to my faulty memory of it (the funeral music) featuring in Barry Lyndon.

[MickyD]

I would like to put in a word for the keyboard music - I particularly like those recorded by Kenneth Gilbert and Richard Egarr, both for Harmonia Mundi.

[Pulcinella]

I'd also put in a word for the Complete Odes and Welcome Songs:

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7945232--purcell-complete-odes-welcome-songs

[silvestrione]

These threads are great. Could I politely request that the date they are going out ('on air', I mean!) is included in the thread title?