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cd-grounds-for-pleasure

Grounds for Pleasure

£10.00

Extract from My Ladye Nevel’s Grownde | Track 2William Byrd
00:00 / 01:43
Extract from Hornpipe | Track 21Henry Purcell
00:00 / 00:47

Description:

Grounds for pleasure - Keyboard Music from Seventeenth Century England

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Track List:

  1. Anon: My Lady Carey’s Dompe

  2. William Byrd: My Ladye Nevel’s Grownde

  3. Thomas Tomkins: A Short Verse

  4. Thomas Tomkins: Grounde 5) Henry Purcell: A New Ground

  5. John Blow: Mortlack’s Ground

  6. William Inglot: The Leaves Bee Greene

  7. Orlando Gibbons: Italian Ground

  8. Orlando Gibbons: Pavan: Lord Salisbury

  9. John Blow: Suite in D minor (Ground)

  10. John Blow: Suite in D minor (Hornpipe)

  11. John Blow: Suite in D minor (Minuet)

  12. Orlando Gibbons: Fantasia

  13. Orlando Gibbons: Ground

  14. Henry Purcell: Chacone

  15. Henry Purcell: A Ground in Gamut

  16. William Croft: Suite in A major (Ground)

  17. William Croft: Suite in A major (Minuett)

  18. John Blow: Ground in Gamut Flatt

  19. Henry Purcell: Ground in D minor

  20. Henry Purcell: Hornpipe

  21. William Byrd: A Grounde

Reviews:

This disc is a model of intelligent and sensible programming. The liner-notes are informative and helpful to put the music into perspective. The same goes for the extensive notes about the harpsichord, which are accompanied by a beautiful picture. For harpsichord lovers this is a disc not to be missed.
Johan van Veen, 2015

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The success of Booth’s performances also stems from tempi which take time to enjoy not just the harpsichord’s tone but the richness and lyricism that is there in the music. The use of the 4’, sounding an octave higher, to accompany the right hand in Purcell’s A New Ground or Gibbons’s Italian Ground is especially effective, lending the music delicacy and perhaps even a touch of ironic detachment. …The recording is good, and overall this is a characterful, honest and engaging recital.
Lindsay Kemp, Gramophone

This recording, made in 2014, is the first CD recording on my newly-restored original 17th century harpsichord by Nicholas Celini.

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There is a series of articles about the instrument and its restoration on the News page, and a video of Purcell’s Ground in D minor being played on it, below. Those who are particularly interested will enjoy the upper manual (played with the left hand here) being at 4 foot pitch (i.e. an octave higher than notated).

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