Customer Reviews

Purcell - King Arthur / Gens, McFadden, Piau, S. Waters, J. Best, Padmore, Paton, Salomaa, Les Arts Florissants, Christie

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As with many other Les Arts Florissants recordings, this one followed a live production, and it shows: the vocal and orchestral characterization of the music is all the more expressive and meaningful. King Arthur, like most other Purcell's "operas," is a combination of spoken drama and "incidental music" to accompany it. Les Arts Florissants presented the entire four-hour spectacle on stage, but committed to disc only the musical part. Yet, even without the spoken word, every scene feels complete. Especially memorable are the scene of sacrifice in the first act, the famous scene of the Cold Genius (wonderfully sung by Petteri Salomaa); and the succession of vocal numbers in the fifth act, including "The Fairest Isle" (in which Veronique Gens simply shines) and the incredible ATB trio "For Folded Flocks" (Padmore, Paton, Best). Incidentally, here as elsewhere, Christie adopts a lower pitch of a' 392 Hz in order to enable high tenors (hautes-contre) to sing alto parts. This has become Christie's signature practice, and it is perfectly borne out by the latest scientific research into authentic baroque performance methods. This recording won a major Gramophone award in 1995, a very deserved recognition of excellence!

There is a marvellous sense of energy and joy which comes from this recording. I have the Pinnock recording of King Arthur and I used to have the Gardiner recording (it was stolen from me). I enjoy many things in all the recordings of this work, but Les Arts Florissants's recording is very special. I sang in a performance of this work two years ago and I played both the Pinnock and Christie recordings to my fellow chorus members and all agreed that the Christie recording is just brilliant in every way.

The cast of this recording is superb, all the usual LAF suspects are here - Véronique Gens, Claron McFadden, Sandrine Piau, Mark Padmore, Petteri Salomaa and others - and the orchestra and chorus are in top form.

Needless to say, there is some irony in this work, in that the music is very French in its form, structure and effects - the Cold Genius aria was plagiarised from one of Lully's operas! The opera is, of course, a semi-opera and would have included a considerable amount of spoken dialogue. However, the music Purcell composed for King Arthur or The British Worthy is in a class of its own. Only his French contemporaries Marc-Antoine Charpentier and André Campra penned music of the same quality.

I highly recommend this beautiful and exciting recording to all music lovers.

Per Gramophone, this recording is one of the 75 best opera recordings of all time. I couldn't agree more. Bravo, William Christie. At least one other recording by Christie is also on this list (I didn't check, maybe there are more): Charpentier Medee.

I must add one thing to the other five reviewers' praises: Susannah Waters - who has now gone on to a successful writing and directing career and who you may have never even heard of as a singer - here sings the most limpid and nimble lines you can imagine in the Act 3 masque with the Cold Genius. Her lyrical lines are melting and warm, yet well within the parameters of taste of today's baroque specialists; and her ornamentation is stunning and graceful and fleet. I wish more baroque singers combined these two qualities so well. I don't know why she quit singing, but this recording makes me sorry she did. Nevertheless, I greatly admire someone with this much talent who moves on to do other things with equal panache.

I saw Les Arts Florissants and Christie perform this live in 2001, and I still consider it the most crushingly beautiful experience of my classical-music lifetime (I've been listening for almost 40 years now). Needless to say, I agree with the five-star recommendations above. The Deller recording is nice in its own way, but it's just not in the same league as a historic recording as this. If severely pressed, I might go so far as to say that if one could have only one baroque recording, this should be the one.

Yes - it's beautiful; but it does have some rubato which to me was unexpected and rather annoying. No doubt it's all very authentic, but still. Deller doesn't do this on his recording and I prefer the tempo his way - traditional. Other amateurs, like me, who love "King Arthur" might find this version occasionally tiresome.