Henry PURCELL (1659-1695)
My Heart is Inditing, Z30 [18:37]
O Sing unto the Lord, Z44 [12:33]
Rejoice in the Lord Always, Z49 [8:51]
Voluntary in D minor, Z719] [5:49]
Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem, Z46 [8:01]
My Beloved Spake, Z28 [10:49]
Paul Plummer (organ)
Choir of New College Oxford, The Band of Instruments/Edward Higginbottom
rec. Chapel of New College Oxford, 2-3 September 1995
CRD 3504 [65:17]
This is a most distinguished disc presenting five of Purcell’s
verse anthems and one of his three surviving works for solo organ in performances
which are high on stylistic awareness and musical authority. Edward Higginbottom
is an instinctive interpreter of this area of the repertory and he draws some
crisp, clean and elegant singing from his Oxford choristers. The Band of Instruments
comprises, for this recording, three members of the renowned Fitzwilliam Quartet
(Lucy Russell, Jonathan Sparey and Alan George) whose work in early music
on disc has attracted considerable respect in recent years, plus the noted
gamba player Joanna Levine. With such musicians thoroughly versed in the practice
of period instrument performance and interpretation of early music, it is
little surprise that this disc has such an air of authority about it. On top
of that it was recorded during the Purcell tercentenary year when these performers
were obviously utterly immersed in this music and could treat its performance
almost as almost second nature.
The question needs to be asked, however; is a group of four string players
and an organist sufficient to match the demands of music which was originally
written to be accompanied by the “King’s 24 Violins”, a
performing ensemble put together after the Restoration by Charles II in imitation
of the “24 Violons du Roi” he had experienced while in exile at
the court of Louis XIV? The answer is, sadly, no, and what some of these performances
lack is the opulence, stature and sheer drama which Purcell wrote into them;
not least the coronation anthems My Heart is Inditing (for James
II in 1685) and Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem (for William and Mary
in 1689). In particular, the final verse setting of the first of these feels
awkwardly exposed.
The small instrumental ensemble is far better suited to O Sing unto the
Lord, one of Purcell’s most Italianate anthems and one apparently
composed in 1688 for reduced forces in order to highlight the “stupendous
base” voice of John Gostling. Whether the bass soloist on this recording
– Clive Letchford – has the same resonance and bulk of tone contemporary
reports suggest was in the gift of Gostling I cannot tell: Gostling, nine
years Purcell’s senior, died in 1733 at the remarkable age of 83. But
Letchford’s is quite a light and elegant voice, more a part of the choral
fabric than standing out demonstratively on its own. Nevertheless the beautifully
fluffy and buoyant singing gives this anthem a lovely feeling of freshness.
One word sums up Higginbottom’s approach to this repertory, and that
is lightness. Rhythms are given great buoyancy, musical phrases have a pleasing
lift and bass lines, notably the bell-like scales underpinning the instrumental
interjections in Rejoice in the Lord Alway, float along almost weightlessly.
This lightness of touch is enhanced by well-chosen tempi which neither push
the music along too briskly nor dwell too heavily over the more magnificent
moments, while those characteristic false relations collide and move on with
little lasting impact. For my money the most rewarding performance on the
disc is My Beloved Spake where the verse trio (Stephen Taylor, Philip
Cave and Eammon Dougan) seems to be having an absolute ball with the famously
sensuous text from the Song of Solomon,while Higginbottom’s
deftness of touch ensures the abrupt changes of mood and tempo flit by with
all the charming flightiness of a flock of swifts.
Purcell’s organ music has not been passed down to us in any great quantities;
a result, according to Mark Humphreys’ somewhat uneven booklet notes,
of the practice of improvising voluntaries rather than writing them down.
But among those which have survived in its original version is the D minor
Voluntary for the Double Organ which Paul Plummer performs according
to the original score, complete with precise realisation of Purcell’s
extremely detailed ornamentation; a style of ornamenting radically different
from that of both Purcell’s French and German counterparts and one which,
for those unaccustomed to it, can sound almost clumsy. He has also tried hard
to create some feel for the sound world of Purcell’s time through his
registration. But despite all this, the performance rather lacks the elegance
and easy fluency of the choral items which make this disc so distinguished.
Marc Rochester
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