The curious thing about this performance of King Arthur is that the title character is nowhere to be seen – or heard. First performed in 1691, with music by Henry Purcell and text by John Dryden (surely the best double-act in London at the time), this semi-opera is part spoken theatre, in which principal characters such as Arthur drive the narrative, part incidental music and songs. England’s Gabrieli Consort and Players are only concerned with the latter, resulting in a series of disjointed musical moments in which minor characters, from fairies to shepherds, sing of gods, love and war.

Gabrieli Consort and Players

How beautiful those musical moments are, however, especially in the hands of Gabrieli founder and artistic director Paul McCreesh, who conducted from memory. He knows the work intimately because, together with one of the ensemble’s bass-violin players, Christopher Suckling, McCreesh has assembled a performing edition of King Arthur from various sources – none of them complete or in Purcell’s hand.

All 17 musicians played period or reproduction instruments, including two bass violins, short-necked and bowed upright, and a hole-less trumpet – a challenging instrument masterfully, if all too rarely, wielded by Jean-François...