Davies's quick coloratura is dazzling in the final aria, 'How can I stay when love invites?'

Davies's phrasing is to be admired, spanning as it does long lines of breath control.

a first class anthology of Handel arias. The singing of Iestyn Davies is a delight from start to finish and he receives ideal support from Robert King and his players.

[the slow arias] allow us to appreciate Davies's extraordinary evenness of tone, his immaculate breath control and the rapt subtlety of his phrasing...the handful of virtuoso arias are delivered with terrific panache and a bravura technique that is second to none. The King's Consort under Robert King are dark-toned and admirably sensual throughout.

Iestyn Davies brings a grace and calm entirely appropriate to these Handel arias...Throughout, Davies’ control is remarkable.

he cherishes the words while negotiating the technical hurdles with amazing fluency and consistency of timbre...Davies’s definition of the varying moods in these arias is of an absorbing order, matched as it also is by the King’s Consort’s judicious range of colour in the orchestral accompaniments on a disc that highlights a countertenor voice in its prime.

Davies is in his prime of vocal flexibility, and authoritative in modes both pious (‘O sacred oracles of truth’) and warlike (‘Mighty love now calls to arm’). Two cameos from Carolyn Sampson are, naturally, ravishing.