This next-to-penultimate volume of Robert King's survey of Purcell's sacred music introduces four more works receiving first recordings, and six more of which only two are currently available in the catalogue. None of the newcomers is universally top-notch but there are moments of great individual beauty in each which warrant repeated listening. The Lord is my light is a distinctive work, tautly constructed with satisfying alternations between solo exclamations and fetching instrumental commentaries. If the subdued and melancholic effect is a touch unyielding vocally, Purcell's magisterial command of the string symphony and ritornello makes for a satisfying introduction to the disc, all the more so for the understated and genial shaping of lines. John Gostling's astonishing bass voice with its spectacular range was a source of some admiration at court (Charles II is said to have given him a silver egg of guineas since ''eggs were good for the voice'') and if we can assume that The Lord is King was written for him, Purcell found a noble medium to set the lucid imagery of Psalm 97. The expressive range of the music requires sustained artistry and Michael George, who must feel by now that he is a reincarnation of Gostling, gives a committed account of the work. I was less taken with the third debutante Blessed is he, an early piece which suffers from a series of sections which add up to little of substance, the concluding and well-directed Alleluias arrive too late to save the day. The experimental years before 1680 are better represented by the highly dramatic Let God arise, mightily performed here and a delightfully maverick curiosity.
The remaining works have all at one stage found their way into the studio and they are headed by O Lord God of hosts, a beautifully moulded work in eight parts; Purcell is in his element here with a meaningful but economical text (a desolate one, of course), set with subtly interchanging textures and producing a harmonic fabric of the composer at his most elusively grand. The performance is powerful in places, especially towards the end but there is too much a feeling of surface tension rather than of music toughly grasped with the intensity coming from within. Two more early works precede the jewel in the crown of the volume, if not the series. Saul and the Witch of Endor, these days more often called In guilty night, is as King points out in the booklet an unclassifiable work of mesmerizing proportions. This dramatic scena is given a profound and impassioned reading and caps another distinguished release.'