Purcell Close Thine Eyes Klisowska Kooij - STR33931 - Stradivarius - Classique - Nos labels

From the liner notes by Dinko Fabris: “The myth of Purcell the “Orpheus Britannicus”, the most important musician born in England before Britten in the twentieth century, is strengthened also by its instinctive likening to the biography of Mozart: they died a century apart at less than 36 years and produced in such a short time a staggering number of compositions: 626 works for the Austrian, 871 for the Englishman. The pieces chosen for this CD illustrate precisely a intimist repertory, with no division between sacred and profane, in the same ideal arrangement together with instrumental pieces of Purcell’s contemporaries, precisely the way in which it could happen in London in a private performance of the time. These composers are John Banister (pioneer of music for the violin at the court of Charles II, died in 1679), Gottfried or Godfrey Finger (Moravian violinist and composer who lived until 1730) and Antony Poole (almost unknown Jesuit and musician formed in Spanish Flanders and who lived until 1692, whose figure is the subject of a doctoral thesis defended in 2011), the last two active at the court of James II (1685-88) and thus colleagues of the twentyfive- year-old Henry. Purcell himself is well represented with some of his instrumental compositions: a Ground in C minor and Suite in G major (from A choice collection of Lessons, 1696) for the harpsichord and the famous set of variations Two in one upon a ground, a chaconne taken from the third act of the “semi-opera” Prophetess, or The History of Dioclesian (1690), which in this recording uses an unpublished lute part taken from a manuscript today in Poznan in Poland (“Mr’s Purcell 1st treble”)