These superb examples of Purcell’s choral music, both church music and secular cantatas, as well as a brief, joyful trumpet sonata, make an attractive collection, well recorded. The singing is excellent from a group which includes such distinguished singers as the counter-tenor, Christopher Robson, though the instrumental groups is lacking in bite in the string section, hardly matching the wind. But this is not enough to detract from the pleasure of the music-making overall. David Staff on the trumpet is outstanding, in both the Sonata and the choral works too. Specially fascinating is the première recording of the Noise of Foreign Wars, a substantial fragment of a cantata only recently identified as being by Purcell.