Christopher Purves, Jonathan Cohen, Arcangelo Handel's Finest Arias For Base Voice, Vol. 2 (2018)

Marc-Antoine Charpentier studied in Italy with Giacomo Carissimi, and he was one of the first composers to introduce aspects of Italian styles to France. His big motets lend themselves naturally to operatic singing, and even in liturgical works like the ones collected on this release, the Italian influences are still there. Sample the Magnificat à 3, with its ground bass-like construction and its unusual texture, including three male voices (bass, tenor, and haute-contre). The opening Litanies de la vierge are for a six-voice group, but the bulk of the program consists of the titular Leçons de ténèbres, solo works (two for bass and one for haute-contre) with a small ensemble to which is given a good quantity of expressive writing and contrapuntal clashes.

The delightful scenario of L'Apothéose de Lully imagines the composer Lully, one of François Couperin s forebears at the court of Louis XIV, being wafted up to Mount Parnassus by Apollo. There, he meets the Italian muses, and the music becomes that synthesis of the French and Italian styles which Couperin so admired. All of this is captured with grace in Arcangelo's playing under its founder, Jonathan Cohen. The other work on the disc is the sacred Leçons de ténèbres, sung with purity by sopranos Katherine Watson and Anna Dennis and revealing another side to Couperin's art.

After a first album dedicated to Weill, Zemlinsky and Korngold (Alpha272), Kate Lindsey explores here her other repertoire of choice, the music of the eighteenth century. In partnership with Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo, she has recorded three cantatas focusing on the myth of Ariadne, abandoned on the island of Naxos after helping Theseus kill the Cretan Minotaur by giving him a ball of thread so that he could find his way back through the labyrinth. Alessandro Scarlatti's Ebra d amor fuggia (1707) relates Ariadne's flight, drunk with love , alongside Theseus, for whom she expresses her tenderness in the magnificent aria Pur ti stringo .

Young countertenor Iestyn Davies makes his highly anticipated Hyperion solo debut with an enchanting disc of cantatas by the Italian composer Nicola Porpora. Porpora s ability to set the Italian language to music was widely acknowledged during his lifetime and his music is full of imaginative word painting. Davies luminous tone has a celestial purity and he performs with prodigious technical assurance. His astonishing breath control creates a seamless melodic line. Davies is accompanied by the ensemble Arcangelo in interpretations that go far beyond mere historical understanding.

The musical language of the New York-based Arnold Rosner (1945–2013) clothes the modal harmony and rhythm of pre-Baroque polyphony in rich Romantic colours, producing a style that is instantly recognisable and immediately appealing.