These two reissues perhaps offer the two extremes of Dido interpretation. Raymond Leppard with the English Chamber Orchestra gives a grand performance very much in the old style, one that would sound well in a large opera house and from the very first notes declares itself to be the narrative of one of the world's most famous tragedies: the sound is opulent, all the inner details of Purcell's counterpoint are milked for their full expressive value, and the playing has all the control of shading one would expect from the English Chamber Orchestra at its best. Alongside this, Andrew Parrott can seem almost too intimate: at ten years' distance, the advantages of his lighter tone are obvious enough, and historical research decisively supports his more private approach; but Leppard surely shows that Purcell's music can well support a grander reading. Besides, Leppard gives a performance with considerable bite and verve. His only major drawback is in the chorus, which sounds leaden-footed when put alongside Parrott's bright and nimble choir (though Parrott's singers do not approach the sheer lilting happiness of the First Act chorus ''Fear no joy'').
For all that it now seems dated, then, Leppard's performance has dramatic dimensions that are eminently worth retaining. These begin with the contrast between the rich-voiced Dido of Tatiana Troyanos and the clean Belinda of Felicity Palmer: the differences between their characters emerge very strongly here, whereas Emma Kirkby and Judith Nelson have strikingly similar voices. Troyanos and Palmer may both sound a shade miscast in terms of range, whereas Kirkby and Nelson cover their lines effortlessly; but the contrast of personality between Dido and Belinda must surely be the main dramatic force in the first act, and Parrott misses that.
Similarly the confrontation between Dido and Aeneas in the last act is more powerful in Leppard's recording. Although David Thomas is incomparably the best, most lucid and most intelligent Aeneas on record, Parrott does not give him quite enough musical space to make the sudden changes of mind and mood comprehensible in dramatic terms; and for the same reason Kirkby cannot challenge the tragic and irascible singing of Troyanos in that scene. This is not a matter of historically appropriate colours, it seems to me, so much as a sense of drama created by flexible tempo and declamation, matters in which Leppard's extensive experience in the theatre gave him the advantage.
In other matters the two are more evenly balanced. Jantina Noorman is a distinctive and compelling Sorceress for Parrott, though not to everybody's taste, and Patricia Kern manages to generate a convincing threat by more conventional means. Both recordings come a little unstuck with the witches—those of Leppard sounding matronly and those of Parrott too absurd.
The Parrott recording has long been a favourite of many listeners, as indeed it should, with Kirkby, Thomas and Nelson in the cast. It has already been available on full-price CD; and it will surely gain new friends with the reissue (even if one regrets the lack of a libretto in the insert). But Leppard's musicianship and sensitivity merit the closest attention: nobody will be disappointed with his performance.'