IBO & Peter Whelan - The Hibernian Muse - All Music

The Baroque music scene in Ireland is hardly mentioned in textbooks or heard on concert programs. However, Peter Whelan and his Irish Baroque Orchestra have issued several recordings exploring this almost unknown repertory and have uncovered several real finds showing the vitality of the Dublin scene, well before Handel's Messiah had its premiere there. Consider Henry Purcell's Great parent, hail!, Z. 327, an ode (a little cantata of a sort) composed for the 100th anniversary of Dublin's Trinity College in 1694. Perhaps because of the rather stodgy text, name-checking the royals and various others, this has been considered a minor Purcell work, but one would never know it from the gorgeous melodies here, given the perfect mixture of weight and lilt by Whelan, his orchestra, and his fine group of soloists. Even more obscure is The Universal Applause of Mount Parnassus, a birthday cantata written for Queen Anne in 1711 and performed at Dublin Castle. Its composer, Johann Sigismund Kusser (or Cousser), was a Hungarian who had come to Dublin as an opera director, and it would seem that he made a close study of Purcell's works. The cantata is peppy, thoroughly enjoyable, and strong enough to make one want to explore the composer further.