Indispensible recordings 03.08.2024. Proms Composer 3: Purcell

[Pulcinella]

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?

Thanks for the suggestion.
I wasn't sure how many characters were allowed in titles and how much is visible on smaller screens.
Hope what I've done helps.

[silvestrione]

Thanks for the suggestion.
I wasn't sure how many characters were allowed in titles and how much is visible on smaller screens.
Hope what I've done helps.

Thank you so much for prompt response. I logged in, saw them, and started to imagine they'd been there all along!

[Barbirollians]

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

Isn’t it Funeral Music for Queen Mary ? Anne outlived Purcell .

[Pulcinella]

Isn’t it Funeral Music for Queen Mary ? Anne outlived Purcell .

This is what Barry Lyndon uses. My poor memory thought it was Purcell, but you're right that it would have been music for Mary not Anne if it had been (Richard has his queens confused, compounding my mistake!).

The film's period setting allowed Kubrick to indulge his penchant for using classical music, and the film score includes pieces by Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Paisiello, Mozart, and Schubert. The piece most associated with the film, however, is the main title music, Handel's Sarabande from the Keyboard suite in D minor (HWV 437). Originally for solo harpsichord, the versions for the main and end titles are performed with strings, timpani, and continuo. The score also includes Irish folk music, including Seán Ó Riada's song "Women of Ireland", arranged by Paddy Moloney and performed by The Chieftains. "The British Grenadiers" also features in scenes with Redcoats marching.

And for A Clockwork Orange:
The main theme is an electronic transcription of Henry Purcell's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, composed in 1695, for the procession of Queen Mary's cortège through London en route to Westminster Abbey.

[Keraulophone]

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.

David Thomas was then a well-known bass soloist brought in to sing this solo and not a member of the choir (as far as I remember). At least, he didn’t sing in the choir when I was in Oxford around that time. He had been a choral scholar at King’s, Cambridge. Thomas does a fine job of it, though it would have been even better to have been able to hear John Gostling of the Chapel Royal sing it, having asked Purcell to set a few verses from the Psalms in thankfulness for his and the King’s deliverance from a shipwreck.

This collection by Simon Preston and his Christ Church choir was the last he made with them before taking up the post Purcell once held at Westminster Abbey. The highlight for me is Jehovah, quam multi sung hostes mei, in which one sublime moment follows another, perfectly judged by the incomparable Preston, and of course it includes another bass solo, known in choir vestries as ‘Aunty Mabel’.

[Pulcinella]

David Thomas was then a well-known bass soloist brought in to sing this solo and not a member of the choir (as far as I remember). At least, he didn’t sing in the choir when I was in Oxford around that time. He had been a choral scholar at King’s, Cambridge. Thomas does a fine job of it, though it would have been even better to have been able to hear John Gostling of the Chapel Royal sing it, having asked Purcell to set a few verses from the Psalms in thankfulness for his and the King’s deliverance from a shipwreck.

This collection by Simon Preston and his Christ Church choir was the last he made with them before taking up the post Purcell once held at Westminster Abbey. The highlight for me is Jehovah, quam multi sung hostes mei, in which one sublime moment follows another, perfectly judged by the incomparable Preston, and of course it includes another bass solo, known in choir vestries as ‘Aunty Mabel’.

I'm sure that you're right about David Thomas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Thomas_(bass)
My confusion arose from the way the solos are credited in the booklet, which makes both him and alto Matthew Bright appear as though they are members of the choir.

[Mandryka]

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.

Here's Sokolov

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpbpZLgX0kQ

[Master Jacques]

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.

There is no doubt that King Arthur, The Fairy Queen and Diocletian are infinitely richer and more variagated theatre scores than the compact, linear Dido and Aeneas. A lot of people criticising these semi-operas - which are no less cogent as stage works than other operas with spoken dialogue, such as Fidelio, The Magic Flute or Oberon - have never seen them, and cannot conceive their masque-like, musical-poetic power in the theatre. Dryden's King Arthur in particular, was conceived as national drama, and fully lives up to its claim.

And they are revived successfully, in places other than their own, benighted country. When visiting Würzburg a few years ago, I was surprised to see that King Arthur was in the state opera/theatre's repertoire, and had proved so popular that it was regularly revived! More shame on us for our lazy prejudice against anything which doesn't fit 'normal' stage rules. These are great works, and all the greater given a dramatic context.

[recommended: Pinnock's King Arthur, Norrington's Fairy Queen, Gardiner for Diocletian, with the Lewis recordings of the first two as necessary 'historical' documents).]