Purcell: Love Songs / Mields, Katschner, Lautten Compagney

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PURCELL Timon of Athens: Curtain Tune; Overture; Hark! How the Songsters; Love in Their Little Veins; But Ah!; Come All to Me. Dioclesian: Dance; First...


PURCELL Timon of Athens: Curtain Tune; Overture; Hark! How the Songsters; Love in Their Little Veins; But Ah!; Come All to Me. Dioclesian: Dance; First Music; Chaconne; Prelude; Since from my dear; Let us dance; Butterfly Dance. King Arthur: For Love Ev’ry Creature; Hornpipe; Bouree. The Fairy Queen: Entrance of Night; One Charming Night; Hush No More; Ye Gentle Spirits of the Air; O Let Me Weep; If Love’s a Sweet Passion; Hark! The Echoing Air; Chaconne • Dorothee Mields (sop); Wolfgang Katschner, cond; Lautten Compagney Berlin • CARUS 83.435 (76:12)


I have rarely heard the Entrance of Night from The Fairy Queen sung more fetchingly, more sensitively than here by Dorothee Mields, but her consistently touching yet full-throated singing is hardly the full story of this Purcell disc. The program begins with what I am tempted to call a swinging version of the Curtain Tune from Timon of Athens. The first sound is of a twanging theorbo playing an ostinato pattern; it’s an “authentic” instrument, but the line, with its bent notes, played on an electric bass an octave lower would not sound particularly odd. Later the strings emphasize the back beat. This version adds percussion as well as a plucked bass; one dance unfolds over something like castanets, and I swear I hear bongo drums elsewhere. Nor is that all. Hark! How the Songsters begins with some discreet bird songs, as if it were by Villa-Lobos. You’ll never hear a more vigorous Hornpipe than the one from King Arthur played here.


I am afraid I am putting off the more serious early-music listeners. I don’t mean to. Much to my surprise, all of what I have just described is perfectly delightful. The band is lively, and beautifully recorded. The effects are tactful and often enlightening. Wolfgang Katschner has taste, and a taste for variety: There is nothing untoward or unexpected, for instance, in the little Prelude from Dioclesian that is played by flute, oboe, and bass. It couldn’t be lovelier. OK, I might not expect something that sounds like a tambourine in a Purcell recording, but it is slapped only a couple of times and creates a slightly more exuberant air. These are dances, after all. Perhaps I should speak more about Dorothee Mields as well. She has a powerful and also beautiful voice that conveys joy as well as pathos. It’s not at all jarring to go from a rousing hornpipe to Mields sweetly singing I Love and I Must. This is a surprising but also a perfectly delightful disc.


FANFARE: Michael Ullman


Product Description:

  • Release Date: August 10, 2010


  • UPC: 409350834356


  • Catalog Number: CV83435


  • Label: Carus


  • Number of Discs: 1


  • Composer: Henry Purcell


  • Conductor: Wolfgang Katschner


  • Orchestra/Ensemble: Lautten Compagney


  • Performer: Dorothee Mields