Les Goûts-Authentiques is an early music ensemble who reference their name from ‘Les Goûts-Réunis’, in which work Francois Couperin described the striving for a fusion of the French and Italian baroque styles during the first half of the 18th century.

The ensemble presents a new recording ‘Dry Those Eyes’ which contains Songs, Suites and Grounds by John Blow and his contemporaries. After Purcell’s death at the age of only thirty-six, several leading musicians were moved to compose odes in tribute to him.

The grandest, laid out for soloists, chorus and full orchestra, is by Clarke, but incomparably the finest is Blow’s Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell. Based on a poem by John Dryden, the greatest poet of the age and another close associate of Purcell’s, it was very simply scored for two countertenors, two recorders and basso continuo.

This new CD represents a selection of works from Purcell himself, Lully and Jeremiah Clarke.