Britten: Purcell Realizations - FELICITY LOTT / SARAH WALKER / JAMES BOWMAN / GRAHAM JOHNSON (2 CDs)

These songs are arrangements only in the sense that Purcell provided the vocal part and a bass line, figured to indicate the harmony, leaving it to the continuo player to ‘realize’ the rest of the accompaniment—which is what Britten does. Obviously this leaves plenty of scope for imagination on the part of the ‘realizer’ and Britten takes full advantage of this freedom, providing accompaniments that are utterly distinctive, although always within the harmonic confines of the originals. As Britten wrote in the foreword to each publication of the songs, calling them performing editions ‘for contemporary conditions’: ‘It is clear that the figured basses in Purcell’s day were realized in a manner personal to the player. In this edition the basses have also, inevitably, been realized in a personal way. But it has been the constant endeavour of the arranger to apply to these realizations something of that mixture of clarity, brilliance, tenderness and strangeness which shines out in all Pur