Julie Cooper, Kirsty Hopkins, Jeremy Budd, Mark Dobell, Matthew Long, Ben Davies, Eamonn Dougan, Stuart Young, The Sixteen, Harry Christophers - Henry Purcell: The Indian Queen (2015) [Hi-Res]

Tracklist

01. Catch - To All Lovers of Music, Performers and Scrapers
02. First Music Air
03. First Music Hornpipe
04. Second Music Air
05. Second Music Hornpipe
06. Act I Overture
07. Act I Trumpet Tune
08. Act I Wake, Quivera, Our Soft Rest Must Cease
09. Act I Why Should Men Quarrel Here, Where All Possess
10. Act I By Ancient Prophecies We Have Been Told
11. Act I Trumpet Tune (Reprise)
12. Act II Symphony
13. Act II I Come to Sing Great Zempoalla’s Story
14. Act II What Flatt’ring Noise is This
15. Act II Begone, Curst Fiends of Hell
16. Act II We Come to Sing Great Zempoalla’s Story
17. Act III You Twice Ten Hundred Deities
18. Act III Symphony The God of Dreams Rises
19. Act III Seek Not to Know What Must Not Be Reveal’d
20. Act III Trumpet Overture
21. Act III Ah, How Happy Are We
22. Act III We, the Spirits of the Air
23. Act III I Attempt from Love’s Sickness to Fly in Vain Third Act Tune - Rondeau
24. Act IV They Tell Us That Your Mighty Powers
25. Act IV Fourth Act Tune - Air
26. Act V While Thus We Bow Before Your Shrine
27. Symphony
28. To Bless the Genial Bed with Chaste Delights
29. Come All, Come All
30. I’m Glad I Have Met Him
31. Good People, I’d Make You All Blest if I Could
32. My Honey, My Pug
33. The Joys of Wedlock Soon Are Past
34. Sound, Sound the Trumpet, Let Love’s Subjects Know
35. Make Haste, Make Haste to Put on Love’s Chains
36. Trumpet Air
37. Let Loud Renown With All Her Thousand Tongues


Henry Purcell was a brilliant music dramatist and in The Indian Queen there is a plethora of detail, colour and characterisation to be explored in every symphony, air and dance. Purcell's instrumental writing leaps off the page with string writing that is second to none and a wealth of variety capped by exquisite writing for trumpet, oboes and recorders.

Based on Dryden’s play, Henry Purcell’s music from The Indian Queen deals with the conflict between the Mexican and Peruvians and principally with Queen Zempoalla. The Indian Queen is a classic story of love and war and, as with all good stories, things don’t go quite as planned for the eponymous Queen…

There is so much exceptional vocal music to revel in but none better than the extraordinary recitative You twice ten hundred deities for the magician Ismeron which opens Act III, and was described by the historian Charles Burney as “the best piece of recitative in our language”.

Like Mozart and Schubert, Henry Purcell lived all too short a life – he lived just over 30 years – and for that reason it was left to his brother Daniel to complete The Indian Queen. Daniel was no Henry but his final Hymeneal masque allows a little light relief. Act V, which was the last music that Henry wrote, is a perfect Didoesque ending to The Indian Queen proper and just proves how we as music lovers suffer when these geniuses die young.

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