From the archives
Andrew Mcgregor revisits recordings by Alfred Deller, the pioneering countertenor and Purcell champion
Forty years ago in Italy, one of the most individual, important and influential voices in early and Baroque music left the stage forever. Alfred Deller died in 1979, having brought the sound of the solo countertenor to a far wider audience, and with it hugely under-appreciated areas of the repertoire. One of Deller’s first loves was the music of Henry Purcell. This set’s title, Alfred Deller – The Voice of Purcell (Harmonia Mundi HMX 7904000.06; 7 Discs), may sound hyperbolic, but to a generation of listeners, and performers, it was almost literally the truth: this was the sound we had in our ears when we thought of Purcell, that immediately recognisable timbre, the clarity, the emotional connection with the beauty of his music, the instinctive Deller musicianship. He taught us how good this music actually is, and these recordings are vital reminders of that rediscovery. Not the first, sometimes not the freshest – Deller’s recording career began a good 20 years before Harmonia Mundi’s founder Bernard Coutaz heard him at a concert in Avignon and was ‘transported to another world’, deciding there and then to rebuild his record company around him. Deller was already in his mid-50s and, while the voice was still remarkably preserved, some of the ease of production had gone and there was a plangent edge to the sound. But listen to Deller’s album of solo Purcell, made just three months before he died, to hear ‘Music for a While’ sung with a truth and understanding only that lifetime of experience could allow. Then in the disc of Purcell songs and anthems there’s the Deller Consort, founded in 1950, that brought so much music out of the church to concert halls around the world. And the operas: Purcell’s Fairy Queen, King Arthur and The Indian Queen, recorded in the 1970s. Old fashioned? Certainly, by modern standards – there’s a slight formality you won’t hear in the best of today’s recordings; but then, where would they be without the advocacy of Alfred Deller and his ensemble before them? And always there’s the intimacy of their approach, the emotional honesty and that extraordinary voice.