Raphael Roginski - Plays Henry Purcell (2017)

I feel a very intimate relation with English culture thanks to my admiration to the music of the 60s. But then there is also William Blake’s Albion, Bennajmin Britten and the myths. I have been puzzled by why do I constantly hear the same thing in the music of Bert Jansch and Led Zeppelin, Joy Division and Dead Can Dance. And then in the music of PJ Harvey and Traffic. And in Henry Purcell too, and in John Dowland and William Byrd. I am sure there is a sense of strong continuity in English music. The sound of it is something like a call from moors, delicate and blurred by the wind. Perhaps it does not suit the contemporary English people, maybe it is more of a sound of King Arthur. If I am not mistaken, it was England where the custom of titling pieces originated from. Dream is something totally different from Sarabande. Titles suggest something and this something sticks in your mind when you are playing the piece. Purcell fascinates me because he speaks of profound emotions that we only know as flattened today. Back then feelings were a magic maze. Purcell was a genius who wrote functional music but somewhere in its depths he managed to put his own mantras, as if woven of haze, full of longing and desire.