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Track(s) taken from CDA66730

Lovely Albina's come ashore, Z394

composer
1695
author of text

Barbara Bonney (soprano), The King's Consort
Recording details: March 1994
Orford Church, Suffolk, United Kingdom
Produced by Ben Turner
Engineered by Philip Hobbs
Release date: September 1994
Total duration: 2 minutes 24 seconds
 

Reviews

‘Those who need all of Purcell's songs at their fingertips should invest in Hyperion's three-disk survey of secular songs, with outstanding performances by Barbara Bonney, Rogers Covey-Crump and James Bowman’ (The New York Times)
The fifth volume of Thesaurus Musicus states that Lovely Albina’s come ashore was ‘The last song that Mr. Henry Purcell sett before he Dy’d’ but the first edition of Orpheus Britannicus is more precise, stating that it was ‘The last Song the Author sett before his Sickness’ (elsewhere telling us that the song ‘From rosy Bow’rs’ in Don Quixote was ‘The last Song the Author sett, it being in his sickness’). We can safely presume that Lovely Albina was one of Purcell’s last compositions. The allegorical references in the text have not yet been satisfactorily explained but may refer to King William’s latest military campaign in Europe or to his reconciliation with Princess Anne. The setting is florid, making much of the interplay between voice and continuo, and full of ornate melismas, but including more thoughtful writing for ‘This beauty will relieve’ and a wonderful last phrase which, in other contexts, Purcell might have marked with his expressively concise direction ‘drag’.

from notes by Robert King © 2003

Other albums featuring this work

Purcell: The complete secular solo songs
CDS44161/33CDs Boxed set (at a special price) — Download only
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