Purcell’s chamber music deserves to occupy an important place in the experience of musicians and listeners, not only because of its intrinsic excellence but because its being non-descriptive or absolute music – devoid of any text that might date it or weigh it down-enables us to perceive its beauties and subtleties with as much readiness as did the Londoners of the later Stuart era.
At the height of the LP era, Musical Heritage Society, the iconoclastic American mail-order label that brought rare and desirable serious classical and baroque music repertoire to an eager audience of enthusiasts, was a leading source for the music of Purcell. Orpheus is pleased to return the second of two volumes focusing on Purcell’s “Sonatas in Four Parts” and featuring some of Britain’s foremost early music interpreters during the 1960s and 70s: violinists Carl Pini and John Tunnell, cellist Anthony Pini, and harpsichordist Harold Lester, newly remastered from archival sources at Urlicht AudioVisual’s New York studio in high resolution sound.
