Some of Handel’s greatest music was written for bass-baritones, and in Purves finds its ideal interpreter.

This superb follow-up [to Vol. 1] makes you wonder anew at the composer’s inventive variety…Purves is surely unique among today’s Anglophone singers in fusing an easily produced high baritone, by turns mellifluous and incisive, with a clean, resonant bass register… … Ever alive to texture and subtleties of colour, Arcangelo on their own give a fresh, spirited account of one of the Op 3 Concerti grossi.

It is the oratorio excerpts that are to my mind the more successful, the direct robustness and the rhetorical character of an air such as ‘See, raging flames’ (Joshua) suiting Purves’s bold, confident singing very well...Purves brings considerable sensitivity to the music where required and Arcangelo provides a tidy version of the Concerto Grosso, Op. 3, No. 4.

Immaculate diction and fluent coloratura show Purves to best effect in Abner’s When storms the proud, from Athalia.