Songs of Passion
Lea Desandre (soprano), Thomas Dunford (lute, musical direction)
With the Jupiter Ensemble and the Jupiter Vocal Ensemble
Jess Dandy (contralto), Laurence Kilsby (tenor), Alex Rosen (bass)
Guest artist: Huw Montague Rendall (baritone)
Music by John Dowland and Henry Purcell
Label: Warner Classics – Erato
Available on all streaming platforms
Across two centuries of English song, Songs of Passion brings together the intimate melancholy of John Dowland and the theatrical imagination of Henry Purcell. In this new digital edition for Erato, soprano Lea Desandre joins lutenist and director Thomas Dunford with the Jupiter Ensemble in a programme that feels both historical and deeply personal — a continuation of the creative path they have shaped together through albums such as Eternal Heaven and Idylle.
Dowland’s music forms the album’s contemplative first half. His songs and lute pieces — Come again! Sweet love doth now invite, Flow my tears, Semper Dowland semper dolens — evoke the refined sadness of Elizabethan poetry. “You really feel like he’s a friend,” said Thomas Dunford in a Gramophone feature, recalling how Dowland’s melancholy spoke to him as a teenager. The Jupiter Ensemble brings a chamber-like transparency to these works, where Desandre’s voice moves with quiet grace above the soft pulse of lute and viols.
The second part of the album turns to Henry Purcell, whose expressive range and dramatic instinct expand the emotional palette. Arias from The Fairy Queen and Dido and Aeneas form the heart of this section, including the famous lament “When I am laid in earth,” sung with disarming simplicity by Desandre. Baritone Huw Montague Rendall joins in If Love’s a Sweet Passion, while the Jupiter Vocal Ensemble (Dandy, Kilsby, Rosen) adds clarity and warmth to the choral textures. In her words to Gramophone, Desandre described the recording of Purcell’s “O let me weep” as “a very special and magical moment… we were all connected together in emotion.”
Dunford and Desandre conceived Songs of Passion as a collective creation — a “family album,” as Dunford called it. The project gathers long-time collaborators Doug Balliett, Myriam Rignol, and Louise Ayrton, musicians who share a language of trust and intuition. That collaborative spirit extends to the digital bonus track Take Me Back to You, co-written by Balliett and Dunford — a gentle bridge between early music and their own creative world. The result is not a showcase but a portrait of companionship through music: an ensemble that lives and breathes together, rediscovering the timeless humanity of Dowland and Purcell.
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