Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Catherine Pierard, Susan Bickley, Howard Crook, Roger Norrington - Purcell: The Fairy Queen (2002)

Purcell worked immensely hard on his score for The Fairy Queen, but the original was lost. The version on which this performance is based arrived at London's Royal Academy of Music by devious routes a century and a half later. But in Roger Norrington's hands, it emerges in its pristine beauty: you could not wish for a better introduction to Purcell's greatest stage work. Only a "semi-opera," maybe, but one studded with exquisite songs and majestic choruses. The anonymous libretto is loosely based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but its inexhaustible melodic invention is imbued with Shakespearean magic. Some songs have become concert favorites, notably "O let me weep," but the joy of this double CD is that you discover dozens more, and of comparable quality. Purcell's music breathes in perfect tandem with the words and Norrington creates out of this a riveting symbiosis. The singing is pure Baroque-instrumental clarity of tone, unsullied by any vibrato, and the playing is immaculate. Comedy and pathos are both here in spades; vast space is evoked through the pairing of flutes and the echoing of trumpets. And so are all the colors of nature: Purcell's music foreshadows Vivaldi. --Michael Church