Versatile and ever engaging, soprano Carolyn Sampson shines in this showcase of contrasting Purcell songs, recorded live at Wigmore Hall last year. She and three top baroque players have drawn on the “Gresham manuscript”, written in the composer’s own hand in the last decade of the 17th century but forgotten until the mid-20th century. The disc opens with four richly expressive songs from The Fairy Queen and includes two “mad songs”: Let the dreadful Engines of Eternal Will and From rosy bow’rs from Don Quixote. Laurence Cummings, Elizabeth Kenny and Jonathan Manson contribute instrumental works by Draghi, Corbetta, Simpson and Purcell himself. As an encore, Sampson sings Fairest Isle, unhurried, with lovely ornament and pure tone.
