You can imagine the reviewer's problem here. Record five of a set of eight that will contain all Purcell's odes and welcome songs—many of them to highly uneven texts, most of them composed very fast. What can I say without repeating what I said about earlier volumes? Well, that was before listening to the record. One thing to say (though I have said this before) is that Purcell is a consistently astonishing composer and that there are great wads of magnificent music that is far too rarely heard.
More than that, we have here three vital and absorbing works of entirely different kinds. The most imposing is the latest, Great parent, hail, composed in 1694 for the centenary of Trinity College, Dublin. Nahum Tate's poem is absurd; but Purcell's music is worthy of the Fairy Queen. And it brings out the best qualities of the musicians: Michael George is quite superb in the bass aria ''Awful matron'', Rogers Covey-Crump and John Mark Ainsley make a splendidly eloquent pair of tenors in the duet where the college's ''vig'rous offspring... Shall Liffee make as proud a name/ As that of Isis or of Cam''.
A different kind of pleasure comes from Welcome, welcome, glorious morn of 1691, the third of his birthday odes for Queen Mary. Here is the very stuff of graceful courtly compliment: its elegantly turned phrases brilliantly find the balance between sincerity and wit. Robert King secures just the right gentle touch here: from the restrained playing in the opening Symphony and Rogers Covey-Crump's stylized singing of the first words, through to Gillian Fisher's eloquent reading of the quasi-Miltonic ''My pray'rs are heard'' (where Purcell shows his endlessly resourceful management of musical phrases).
Finally an early work, The summer's absence of 1682, welcoming Charles II back from Newmarket and mendaciously claiming that he is ''Thus strongly secured, mighty Sir, upon your throne,/ By all nations feared, and beloved of your own''. Particularly in its writing for the strings this is a marvellous example of Purcell's early contrapuntal art, brimming with delicious details.
What can also be said about this record is that King and his musicians have absolutely hit their rhythm in the series: everything is excellently judged and sounds right. King's own sleeve-note is judicious and informative. Perhaps I should also mention his claim that for the first time on any record the trumpets have dispensed with the little holes that baroque trumpeters normally use to help their intonation: certainly there is no hint of hesitation or insecurity in the fine playing of Crispian Steele-Perkins and David Blackadder here.'