Label: BIS SACD 1536
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HENRY PURCELL (1659 – 1695): Sweeter than roses; The fatal hour; When first Amintas sued for a kiss; The Plaint; They tell us that you mighty powers above; Man is for the woman made; From silent shades; Music for a while; Now the night is chas’d away; If music be the food of love; Thrice happy lovers (An Epithalamium); The bashful Thames; I attempt from Love’s sickness to fly in vain; Oh! fair Cedaria; Fairest isle; O solitude; If love’s a sweet passion; The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation; An Evening Hymn

Carolyn Sampson, soprano; Laurence Cummings, harpsichord & spinet; Elizabeth Kenny, archlute & theorbo; Anne-Marie Lasla, bass viol; Sarah Sexton, violin I; Andrea Morris, violin II; Jane Rogers, viola
Two song anthologies published shortly after the death of Henry Purcell in 1695 have inspired this highly varied program. Quoting the liner notes by lutenist Elizabeth Kenny, ‘recital programs put together from the anthologies by the original purchasers would have mixed the genres without inhibition. Generally people sang what they liked and played what they liked, in any order they liked.’ It was this free-and-easy approach which incited soprano Carolyn Sampson and her co-performers to combine settings with accompaniments ranging from a single lute or spinet to string quartet with continuo. In Kenny’s words: ‘Seen from modern historically-informed or “authentic” perspectives a not-quite-familiar Purcell emerges, a composer of Gebrauchsmusik, flexibly scored and flexibly interpretable: virtuosic if the performers wish, innocently affecting if not.’ Including some of Purcell’s most well-loved songs as well as lesser-known gems, this collection has as its motto a line from the opening song Sweeter than roses: ‘What magic has victorious love’. As one of today’s most magic – not to say victorious – singers, whether on the opera stage or in the concert hall, Carolyn Sampson’s previous appearances on BIS have earned her high praise, for instance in American Record Guide (‘Her tone is extraordinarily beautiful: natural, warm and unforced, with almost superhuman vocal athleticism’) and from the reviewer in French magazine Classica-Répertoire, who described her performance of Bach’s Jauchzet Gott (on BIS-SACD-1471) in the following, glowing terms: ‘Carolyn Sampson interprets it in a voice which is quite light and angelic, but always present, and with a remarkable vocal ease and an infallible musicality.’

Label: BIS SACD 1546
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STABAT MATER
ANTONIO VIVALDI (1678 – 1741): Sonata ‘al Santo Sepolcro’ in E flat major, RV130; Stabat Mater, RV621
GIOVANNI BATTISTA PERGOLESI (1710 – 1736): Salve Regina
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685 – 1750): Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden (Psalm 51), BWV1083 (Transcription of Stabat Mater by Pergolesi)

Daniel Taylor, counter-tenor; Emma Kirkby, soprano (Bach)

Theatre of Early Music
With a disc entitled Stabat Mater and featuring Pergolesi among the composers, it would be natural to expect his setting (surely the most famous of all) of this heartfelt meditation on the grief of the Virgin Mary to be included in the program. Well, it isn’t – and it is! Only a few years after Pergolesi in 1736 had composed his Stabat Mater, Bach made an adaptation of it using a contemporary German version of the biblical Psalm 51. To suit the requirements of the new text Bach made certain alterations to Pergolesi’s vocal parts, but retained the scheme of solo arias and duets between a soprano and an alto voice. He also added a new, independent viola part to the score and rewrote the basso continuo, giving the work a new harmonic vitality. It’s not only in the form of an arrangement that Pergolesi appears on this disc, however: Psalm 51 is preceded by his own Salve Regina, composed around the same time as the Stabat Mater, and of a similarly expressive, sorrowful character even though the text in question is a hymn of praise to the Virgin Mary. Of Pergolesi’s two settings of the text, the present one – originally in C minor – is the most well-known, and is here performed in the F minor version for alto voice. Opening the disc is Vivaldi’s brief Sonata al Santo Sepolcro (‘at the Holy Grave’), an instrumental work probably intended for inclusion in an Easter church service. This is followed by – finally! – a Stabat Mater proper, also by Vivaldi and probably dating from 1711 or 1712. Vivaldi used just the first ten verses of the text, creating one of the most sombre of all settings, here performed by the Canadian ensemble Theatre of Early Music and its director, counter-tenor Daniel Taylor, who in Bach is joined by Emma Kirkby, taking on the soprano part.