Purcell: Music for a While

Purcell: Music for a While
- Shrink-wrapped
After the intoxicating heat of Mediterraneo, released in 2013, Christina Pluhar and her ensemble L'Arpeggiata now head to the cooler climes of England with Music for a While, an album based on the haunting, graceful and sometimes deeply moving music of Henry Purcell.

Often considered England's greatest composer, Purcell (1659-1695) represents an especially good match for the aesthetic of L'Arpeggiata: he made frequent use of the ground bass, a repeated (ostinato) figure in the lower line, the most famous instance of this occurs in Dido's lament 'When I am laid in earth', the closing number from his opera Dido and Aeneas. The ground bass provides an ideal foundation for the brilliant, sometimes jazz-like improvisation that is the stock-in-trade of the L'Arpeggiata, here comprising singers, (plucked) strings, wind instruments, keyboard and percussion.

The contemporary element in Music for a While (named after a song written for John Dryden's play Oedipus) is exemplified by the contribution, on acoustic and electric guitar, of Austrian jazz-player Wolfgang Muthspiel, while the Baroque tradition is embodied in the celebrated French countertenor Dominique Visse, a singer who set an example for Philippe Jaroussky; Visse was a student of the pioneering British countertenor Alfred Deller (1912-1979), closely associated with the music of Purcell and the revival of interest in Baroque music.
Country USA
Brand Warner Classics
Manufacturer Erato
Binding Audio CD
ItemPartNumber 12462019
Model 28940788
ReleaseDate 2014-03-11
UnitCount 1
UPCs 825646337507
EANs 0825646337507

Country	USA
Brand	Warner Classics
Manufacturer	Erato
Binding	Audio CD
ItemPartNumber	12462019
Model	28940788
ReleaseDate	2014-03-11
UnitCount	1
UPCs	825646337507
EANs	0825646337507

Purcell: Music for a While

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