Within a year of recording this CD at his first solo recital at Wigmore Hall, Iestyn Davies went onto receive the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artists award. The concert also represented his first collaboration with Ensemble Guadagni, comprising some of the UK's finest period instrument specialists. 

The recital opens with a triumphant cantata by Buxtehude and, in John Blow’s As on his deathbed gasping Strephon lay, includes a piece with satirical overtones - celebrating the final repentance of the Earl of Rochester, a famous libertine. By contrast, Handel’s Nine German Arias’ were written in the 1720s to poems expressing “Earthly delight in God” by the composer’s old friend Barthold Heinrich Brockes. 

When Davies sang in Handel’s Partenope at the New York City Opera, the New York Times described him as “The vocal star of the night … He sang with a luminous, creamy countertenor”.