Purcell: Ayres and Songs From Orpheus Britannicus.

For over 200 years now Purcell has been given the Shakespeare treatment - no mere mortal Orpheus but a cultural god, and one elevated to such a lofty seat in the pantheon that in lifting our eyes to him we generally overlook his lesser contemporaries. Yet he enjoyed no such unchallenged supremacy in his own day. To judge from surviving newspapers and the like he was often bracketed with other leading |masters of music, especially Blow, even though his stage works made him a more public figure than any of them. His tercentenary ought to occasion a fresh look at the output of the other composers, living and dead, whose music surrounded him. The Parley of Instruments offer a foretaste of the rich rewards such an effort could bring.

The first of these discs contains a fascinating compilation of works by musicians who differed widely in interests and in stature. Its title notwithstanding, it includes among the memorial odes two purely instrumental works: a modest suite (four movements, four minutes) by Finger, and a single movement by Morgan - both played by oboes and strings, and both frankly inconsequential but none the less attractive for that. The contribution of Hall, however, is another matter. Yes, my Aminta is a substantial cantata for soprano, bass, two recorders and continuo, and has an unlooked-for expressive range and a striking elegance of craftsmanship. The sparkling performance recorded here reveals the composer, long supposed a nonentity, as someone of considerable interest. Evidently Hereford's gain, when Hall …