Henry Purcell (1659-1695) looked like a Florentine prince, was hail-fellow-well-met in tavern and taproom, wrote for the church and also for the stage and salon, was in fact a most likeable young man, as well as a "very great Master of Musick." Except for his appointment as organist at the Chapel Royal and other churches, his compositions were the chief events of his life. Henry Purcell invented the English celebratory style in music.

As we have come to expect with Tragicomedia, the programme is carefully considered, well balanced and colourfully presented. Unlike the group's last and somewhat disappointing release of Anna Magdalena Bach's Notebook (Teldec, 12/94), these Welcome Songs and Odes have a dramatic bite and emotional range (despite the poor-quality verse) which directors Stephen Stubbs and Erin Headley can nurture over comparatively longer periods; this is one of the reasons why they succeeded in their Monteverdi disc of Il Combattimento (10/93) where others are often found wanting. The music chosen here is all out of Purcell's top drawer, with Tragicomedia combining works with ravishing string ritornellos and extrovert paeans to the King, such as the gloriously crystalline and breezy Welcome, viceregent, with the more intimate elegies on the death of Queen Mary which have the capacity to melt marble.

This touching miniature appears in the Gresham Manuscript between extracts of works known to have been performed in April and May 1694. Olinda is wistfully recalling past pleasures, mournfully ‘sighing’ (set to a wonderful melisma by Purcell) that time flies so fast. She calls for the good times to return, but ‘all in vain’. With rueful repeats of the word ‘never’ we are reminded that ‘Time past can never come again’.

This 2 CD-set presents two aspects of Purcell's music: religious music and instrumental music. Let's start by the first CD. It includes magnificent anthems for the Church for soloists, choir, and orchestra. The first track to open the CD, "Rejoice in the Lord alway", is probably one of Purcell's most famous anthem. The beautiful introduction (sometimes known as the Bell Anthem) prepares the entry of the two countertenors who expose the melody, intoned by the choir later. As with Purcell's style, the music is always refined. The soloists are all top-notch here, and the choir (King's College of Cambridge) is, as always, magnificent. It is really nice to hear the soprano part sung by boys, as I think it gives another dimension to Purcell's music.

In quest of the (Baroque) Indies. The subject, synonymous with exoticism in Europe in the Golden Age, pits Aztecs against Incas on the stage: Purcell died before finishing the music but what he left to accompany this staged entertainment is nonetheless a swan-song of exceptional beauty.

Purcell’s fourth and last full-scale semi-opera, The Indian Queen, is often passed over in favour of its longer and more rounded predecessors, especially King Arthur and The Fairy Queen. The reasons are plentiful: Thomas Betterton, with whom Purcell collaborated, never finished his reworking of an early Restoration tragedy and even if he had torn himself away from his business interests in 1695, Purcell would not have been alive to set the remaining music for Act 5. As it happened, Henry’s brother Daniel set the masque from the final act after Betterton had hired an anonymous writer to finish his adaptation. No one can deny that neither verse nor music achieved the heights imagined in the original collaboration; given the quality of the masques in Purcell’s large ‘dramatick’ operas (including Dioclesian, of course), there is an undoubted sense of anticlimax.

As England's greatest composer of the Baroque, Henry Purcell was dubbed the "Orpheus Britannicus" for his ability to combine pungent English counterpoint with expressive, flexible, and dramatic word settings. While he did write instrumental music, including the important viol fantasias, the vast majority of his output was in the vocal/choral realm. His only opera, Dido and Aeneas, divulged his sheer mastery in the handling of the work's vast expressive canvas, which included lively dance numbers, passionate arias and rollicking choruses. Purcell also wrote much incidental music for stage productions, including that for Dryden's King Arthur. His church music includes many anthems, devotional songs, and other sacred works, but few items for Anglican services.

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.

For fans of Il Giardino Armonico's flamboyant flourishes and exuberant expressiveness, it's like having all your birthdays at once, being presented with this great Warner Classics 11 CD set. My own feeling is that this "free" approach to Baroque music is at its best when applied to the theatrical music of disc 8 or the seventeenth century Italian music on disc 1. The showmanship and playfulness is an absolute joy in many of those pieces. I'm less satisfied with the interpretations of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, (on discs 10 and 11), which require a different approach, I feel. I like my Bach to be a little more measured and subtle, I suppose. It has no need of the Il Giardino Armonico treatment. On the whole, though, I do love this set and wouldn't be without it.

Jonathan Kent's spectacular production of Purcell's huge semi-opera is joyous, imaginative and witty Glyndebourne, with its intimate auditorium, provides the perfect setting for a drama which is partly spoken and partly sung. Based on an adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the story is lavished with a brilliance that justifies this production's acclaim. Paul Brown's inventive designs, Kim Brandstrup's exquisite choreography, an excellent cast of actors and singers and outstanding playing by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under William Christie combine to make a seamless theatrical experience, here recorded in High Definition and true surround sound.

This eight-disc set includes odes and theater pieces; and Gardiner's performances are more than excellent. He synthesizes the spare delicacy and ceremonial grandeur of Purcell's music in performances that are very satisfying.

Trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth's album of Magical Memories was recorded during the coronavirus pandemic and intended as a positive statement, suggesting childhood memories that bring strength at a difficult time. The memories are Helseth's own; she heard her mother play the trumpet with an organist in church and loved the combination. It's a simple and direct concept, but it conceals several challenges that Helseth has successfully surmounted on this lovely release. First of all, in Helseth's own words, "There is nothing as difficult to play as a really simple melody – a simple, unadorned, honest melody coming from within. It's magic!" She offers traditional Norwegian folk melodies and classical favorites, and she's right; to make these more than ordinary is difficult, but she pulls it off with really charismatic performances of the likes of "Solveig's Lullaby" from Grieg's Peer Gynt.

The first joint album from countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and guitarist Thibaut Garcia, À sa guitare takes it's name from a song by the 20th century French composer Francis Poulenc. But it's frame of reference is extraordinarily wide - both culturally and stylistically. It's 22 tracks range across 400 years and music by composers and songwriters from France, Britain, Austria, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Argentina and the USA. "The album is a journey between different cultures, different continents and different languages," says Philippe Jaroussky, "but each piece is a world in itself. The idea was to take some risks… sometimes moving to a completely different world between one track and the next." "We can evoke hugely different colours as we juggle between renaissance music and a song by Barbara," explains Thibaut Garcia. "It's our job to play with a palette of colours to produces something unique… We put a great deal of thought into the album, but we also put our hearts into it."

Anna Prohaska’s recital takes us into the moss-carpeted dreamworlds of Ariosto, Ovid, Shakespeare and Tasso. The theme is transformation, by love or magic or a combination of the two. Arcangelo’s instrumental playing is reliably interesting, sometimes too interesting (Jonathan Cohen is not a ‘less is more’ director). But the most effective enchantment occurs when Prohaska stops trying to fit her dryish, coolish voice into a Patricia Petitbon-shaped presentation box.

This 2014 Hyperion collection of 22 hymns sung by the Choir of Westminster Abbey is a straightforward presentation of familiar versions for choir and organ. For the most part, the arrangements are conventional four-part settings, with occasional interpolations of seldom-heard harmonizations and descants, and the performances by the men and boys are appropriately reverent and joyous. The majority of selections are hymns of praise, including Praise, my soul, the king of heaven; Thine be the glory; and Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, though Drop, drop slow tears; I bind unto myself today; and Let all mortal flesh keep silence bring a more somber and penitential mood to the program. The recordings were made in late 2012 and early 2013 in Westminster Abbey, so the sound of the album is typically resonant and spacious, and the choir has a well-blended tone, though the trade-off for the glorious acoustics is a loss of clarity in some of the words.