Rosemary Joshua brings to these accounts all the aplomb of a Baroque diva, with her sharply etched diction, perspicuous dramatic insights and varied vocal timbres...It would be easy for Joshua to steal the show, but the instrumentalists respond to her pliant vocal lines with sensitively articulated continuo playing.

Purcell is not known as a composer of sacred songs. The 24 here, all scored for a single high voice, come from two volumes published in his later years, which group the work of several composers but are dominated by Purcell’s. Some are less than 30 bars long, others sound almost cantata-like. All are intimate and varied in tone. Whether they were designed to be heard in sequence like this is questionable, but [Rosemary] Joshua brings them vividly to life

Joshua brings vocal security and textual intelligence to these works and though a slightly flighty vibrato sometimes threatens the music's intimacy, it does not get in the way of superbly realised greater dramatic truth. The continuo accompaniments are as sensitively accomplished as one would expect from such a line-up...If this is a sober disc, it is also one which reeks of Purcell's genius.

For a singer who began her career in the early 1990s, Joshua sounds astonishingly fresh — Emma Kirkby-like in the purity of her sound, although she brings a wider palette of colour to this kind of music than the veteran early-music diva ever did.

The word-painting of the sacred texts — involving angular leaps, florid melismas and a fluid mixture of declamation and gorgeous lyricism — is intense and detailed. Rosemary Joshua does it full justice, yet also seems to float, lithe and graceful, through it all. It’s a masterclass in delicate Baroque singing.