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Track Listings
| 1. Fairy Queen, Z 629: Oh, oh, let me weep 'The Plaint' |
| 2. Fairy Queen, Z 629: Thrice happy lovers 'An Epithalamium' |
| 3. Don Quixote, Z 578: From rosie bow'rs |
| 4. Indian Queen, Z 630: I attempt from Love's sickness to fly |
| 5. King Arthur, or The British Worthy, Z 628: Fairest Isle |
| 6. History of King Richard II, Z 581: Retir'd from any mortal's sight |
| 7. Oedipus, Z 583: Music for a while |
| 8. Pausanias, Z 585: Sweeter than roses |
| 9. Prophetess, Z 627: Since from my dear Astrea's sight |
| 10. If music be the food of love, Z 379 |
| 11. Not all my torments can your pity move, Z 400 |
| 12. Now that the sun hath veiled his light, Z 193 'Evening Hymn on a Ground' |
| 13. Bonduca, Z 574: O lead me to some peaceful gloom |
| 14. O solitude, my sweetest choice, Z 406 |
Product Description
Review
...One release from the 15 strong batch of hmGold discs can perhaps be taken as the iconic issue. This is the last recorded recital by Alfred Deller, whose long association with the label [Harmonia Mundi] towards the end of his career is charmingly traced in the (atypically personalized) accompanying booklet by the firm's founder, Bernard Coutaz. The countertenor is even credited by Coutaz with triggering a shift in recording policy: away from organ recitals towards a wider spectrum of Renaissance and Baroque vocal music. There are also generous tributes to Deller from four eminent musical colleagues, Gustav Leonhardt, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Rene Jacobs and Paul Elliott. The singer was 67 when he died in July 1979; just three months previously, he had recorded the present Purcell collection in Provence. Listening to it in this context is to experience a glorious sense of rediscovery. Of course, given his age, you can find the odd note that sounds pinched, the odd decoration that is turned slightly awkwardly, the occasional rather sluggish choice of tempo. The miraculous thing is that this unique voice somehow expands to fill the generous acoustic in which it is recorded, and also that all of the great Purcell favourites that he must have sung countless times - 'Fairest Isle' (King Arthur), 'Music for a while' (Oedipus), the great 'Plaint' from the fairy Queen, to name but three - are sung with transparent freshness and integrity, to say nothing of crystalline diction. He is backed throughout by an all-star ensemble that includes both Wieland Kuijken and William Christie. The Alleluias that end the wonderful Evening Hymn are deeply moving. --Piers Burton-Page, International Record Review, May 2008
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
That is to say this is one of the very greatest recordings of any singer of any repertoire. Deller was a genius. So was Purcell though I've often heard these songs sung by many other singers and they have left me cold. Some of the present-day counter-tenors may be technically superior but the expressive freedom and emotional subtleties and nuances that Deller demonstrates here never fails to move. It convinces me that that this music was never meant to be performed with the neutral lack of rhetorical effects that we find in most other singers of this repertoire. But here we go one better than that, for with Deller we seem to be dealing with genuine affects rather than rhetorical effects.
Whatever music you normally listen to this will get through to you if you only listen. This is the essence of song and lyric and voice.
Going to a desert island without this disc would be unthinkable. If they have sent 'time capsules' (if that is what they're called) into outer space to represent us without including this they have done us an injustice. Well some of us anyway.
Mind you there is in inhuman magnificence about these renderings which belongs more to Prof. Tolkien's 6ft elves than to ordinary mortals. Which is why the role of Oberon in Britten's opera 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was specially written for him . And of course Britten's love of Purcell is well known.
Whatever music you normally listen to this will get through to you if you only listen. This is the essence of song and lyric and voice.
Going to a desert island without this disc would be unthinkable. If they have sent 'time capsules' (if that is what they're called) into outer space to represent us without including this they have done us an injustice. Well some of us anyway.
Mind you there is in inhuman magnificence about these renderings which belongs more to Prof. Tolkien's 6ft elves than to ordinary mortals. Which is why the role of Oberon in Britten's opera 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was specially written for him . And of course Britten's love of Purcell is well known.
Format:MP3 Download
Alfred Deller, celebrated English countertenor, who was equally adept at singing English folk music and early music, is here enchanting in these songs by Purcell. There is a curious sort of limpid ethereality to his voice, something other-worldly, which takes this listener, at least out of the 21st century, and makes me feel I have somehow been transported to Arcadia, a land of impossible green-ness and clarity, where people might indeed be spirited away by Faerie Folk! The voice is disembodied, appearing to magically float in the air. Listen to it too long at times of betwixt and between (dusk and dawn) and you might be stolen away by elves, like Thomas A Rhymer! The richly pure vocals float above the most warmly embodied of string instruments, a simple cello accompaniment, which is twined about by harpsichord on some tracks. Angelic bliss indeed.
Forgive the purple prose, but Deller's voice is like a fantastical invention, produced not through technical artifice (twiddled synthetically in a recording studio) but somehow, impossibly, by Deller himself. He doesn't seem to strain to produce the sound, it is a natural artifice!
Loss of a star as not all of the songs are equally riveting and valid - this is down to the specific Purcell pieces, rather than to Deller. The 7 minute long From Rosy Bow'rs in particular lasted every one of its 7 minutes, whereas the other long track, The Plaint was sheer delight.
Forgive the purple prose, but Deller's voice is like a fantastical invention, produced not through technical artifice (twiddled synthetically in a recording studio) but somehow, impossibly, by Deller himself. He doesn't seem to strain to produce the sound, it is a natural artifice!
Loss of a star as not all of the songs are equally riveting and valid - this is down to the specific Purcell pieces, rather than to Deller. The 7 minute long From Rosy Bow'rs in particular lasted every one of its 7 minutes, whereas the other long track, The Plaint was sheer delight.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:MP3 Download|Amazon Verified Purchase
Alfred Deller is not to everybody's taste but for me the download is heavenly bliss.
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