Time Travel

Despite living 300 years apart, Henry Purcell and The Beatles have a great deal in common. Both produced music rich in melody and rhythm, appealed to all music lovers, and, crucially, culturally defined the eras in which they composed and performed. Early music group Lautten Compagney’s fascinating musical journey bridges the centuries with an album that juxtaposes operatic and orchestral works by Purcell with Beatles songs. It’s an experiment that works brilliantly, thanks both to the ingenious Baroque arrangements that confound and delight (the introduction to “Yesterday” moves seamlessly from a Dido and Aeneas aria) and the sublime playing of Asya Fateyeva, whose soprano saxophone creates ancient and modern atmospheres. Its litheness is as perfect for the plaintive lilting of The Beatles’ “Girl,” for example, as it is for the bleakness of Purcell’s “Frost Scene.” An album of surprising musical depths.