Priate Queen

Henry Purcell - Love's Goddess Sure was Blind: The Complete Funeral Music for Queen Mary
The Sixteen / The Symphony of Harmony and Invention / Harry Christophers
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC (tracks): 330 MB | Artwork: 36 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Coro # COR16024 | Country/Year: UK 2004
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque, Vocal, Sacred

"…But now, in the middle of the 2000s, they're back, and they've brought with them an even more wonderful recording of Purcell's funeral music. It's more wonderful because, good as the Collins recording sounded, this Coro recording sounds even better: deeper, richer, warmer, and even more detailed. It's more wonderful because, good as the earlier performances were, these performances sound even better: more passionate, more precise, and even more powerful. And it's more wonderful because while this is exactly the same recording that appeared on Collins, it somehow sounds more wonderful released on the Coro label. How this is possible is impossible to know, but that it does is indisputable. If you don't have Harry Christophers and the Sixteen's Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary, here it is again. This time, don't miss it."

Jordi Savall & Le Concert des Nations - Henry Purcell - The Fairy Queen & The Prophetess - Orchestral Suites (2009) {Alia Vox}
XLD rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 360 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 148 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 102 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2009 Alia Vox | AVSA 9866 | DSD mastering
Classical / Baroque / Suites

This is an SACD reissue on Alia Vox of a CD originally released in 1996 as Astrée 8717. Fans of Savall know that his conducting reflects similar values to his viola da gamba solos: a nuanced view of phrasing, exceptional attention to the beauty and clarity of textures, and a knowledge of appropriate embellishments. These qualities can be found in some of the outstanding slow movements on this disc, most notably “Love’s a Sweet Passion” from act III of The Fairy Queen . Savall’s version takes 3:06 to play; by comparison, Goodman/Parley of Instruments (Hyperion 67001) gives it to us at 1:34; and Gardiner/English Baroque Soloists (Archiv Produktion 992902) is not much longer. It isn’t that Savall’s Le Concert des Nations plays twice as much content, but that they inflect far more, slowing for embellishments to the theme, pausing at the climax of a phrase, or at its conclusion. It’s anyone’s guess which approach is more authentic, but I find Savall’s phrasing, along with a slightly lower pitch and predominance of darker string instruments, mines the natural melancholy of Purcell’s piece to greater advantage without danger of anachronism.

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In one regard, Queen II does indeed provide more of the same thing as on the band's debut. Certainly, of all the other albums in Queen's catalog it bears the closest resemblance to its immediate predecessor, particularly in its lean, hard attack and in how it has only one song that is well-known to listeners outside of their hardcore cult: in this case, it's "Seven Seas of Rhye," which is itself more elliptical than "Keep Yourself Alive," the big song from the debut…