Purcell – O Solitude

O solitude, my sweetest choice!
Places devoted to the night,
Remote from tumult and from noise,
How ye my restless thoughts delight!

As we emerge from the past months of lockdown, few pieces of music resonate so clearly as Purcell’s exquisite O solitude, a setting of three verses of Katherine Philips’s translation of a seventeenth-century French poem. In this concert, the principal players of The English Concert are joined by the incomparable Iestyn Davies, showcasing the intricacy and intimacy of some of Purcell’s best-loved small-scale instrumental works and solo songs.

The English Concert
Harry Bicket Director
Iestyn Davies Countertenor