Henry Purcell's fantasias, mostly in four parts, were written when he was 20 or 21. They were published only in 1959, and they have been recorded relatively infrequently. One issue is that plowing through the set produces a large body of unbroken intricate music; the Chelys Consort of Viols solves that here by breaking up the fantasias with a few operatic dances and the superb Chacony in G minor, Z. 730, a work that superimposes a miraculously natural flow of melody on the strict chaconne bass. The fantasias are rather ...
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Henry Purcell's fantasias, mostly in four parts, were written when he was 20 or 21. They were published only in 1959, and they have been recorded relatively infrequently. One issue is that plowing through the set produces a large body of unbroken intricate music; the Chelys Consort of Viols solves that here by breaking up the fantasias with a few operatic dances and the superb Chacony in G minor, Z. 730, a work that superimposes a miraculously natural flow of melody on the strict chaconne bass. The fantasias are rather mysterious, seemingly written for the established and, by this time rather old-fashioned, four-part viol consort, but there's no definite evidence that this was true. There's no real indication of why Purcell wrote them; they may have been a kind of exercise. String quartets and string orchestras have recorded them, and there are good recordings by Fretwork and by a group led by Jordi Savall. The Chelys readings, clean and rather circumspect, merit strong consideration for those...
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