Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum OT: The best recording of Purcell's Fairy Queen?

I'm quite smitten with many of the Fairy Queen tunes, and I'm like to get a good recording. But which one? It preferably needs to be an English recording, and historically informed, but there still seem to be many to choose from, and some versions seem to shuffle some of the pieces in an odd way (e.g. the Naxos recording).

Are you a Fairy Queen lover? Do you have a favourite recording?

I only have one version on this opera, the recording of Harnoncourt for Teldec. I love it, although I don’t know whether it’s the best recording on this fabulous opera or not. I suppose it’s a matter of taste, but I’m sure this recording is really good.


Here you can listen to some samples:

http://www.amazon.com/Purcell-Bonne...mp;ie=UTF8&qid=1334147172&sr=1-4

This edition is cheaper and is the same recording.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Purcell-The-Fairy-Queen-Henry/dp/B002QZPVC4

Thanks, Recaredo, that's really interesting. There's a difference of around 20+ tracks between this and some other recordings, and this one doesn't - unless I am mistaken - have some pieces such as the Rondeau.

As I understand it, the original work was timed at some 6 hours... Do different performers choose to leave out certain sections/pieces, I wonder?

I don’t know a complete recording of this opera on CD, Eglantine, all ones I know last around 120 minutes. There is a DVD that is timed at four hours, that is still far from six.

http://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/det.../Henry-Purcell-1659-1695-The-Fairy-Queen


There are some excerpts on Youtube