Heroines of Love and Loss - Ruby Hughes, Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann & Jonas Nordberg

'Heroines of Love and Loss' trailer.
Ruby Hughes - soprano
Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann - baroque cello
Jonas Nordberg - theorbo, lute & archlute
Recorded at Confidencen, Stockholm, by Thore Brinkmann.

00.00-01.02 Barbara Strozzi - L'Eraclito Amoroso
01.02-02.12 John Bennet - Venus' Birds
02.12-03.00 Antonio Vivaldi - Allemanda from cello sonata RV42
03.00-03.39 Alessandro Piccinini - Ciaccona
03.39-07.33 Henry Purcell - Dido's Lament

The women appearing before our ears throughout this programme range from the Virgin Mary and Dido, queen of Carthage, to Shakespeare’s Desdemona and the unfortunate Anne Boleyn, waiting for her execution in the Tower of London in 1536. But the disc also features four other heroines – the Italian composers Claudia Sessa, Francesca Caccini, Lucrezia Vizzana and Barbara Strozzi. All active between 1590 – 1675, they will have required great courage to rise above the social conventions of the time, but this surprisingly productive period for female composers also offered an opportunity that would disappear in later centuries: the all-female environment provided by the convent. More than half of the women who published music before 1700 were nuns, including Sessa and Vizzana, who are here represented by brief meditations on the suffering and death of Christ. Caccini and Strozzi, on the other hand, lived very much in the secular world – Caccini at the Florentine court and Strozzi as a free-lance musician and composer in Venice. Unhindered by the restrictions imposed by the church on sacred music they both adhered to the new stile moderno championed by Claudio Monteverdi. Celebrated for their singing, they composed vocal music which makes ‘the words the mistress of the harmony and not the servant’, to quote Monteverdi’s brother Giulio Cesare. The soprano Ruby Hughes has already made her name for herself in a wide-ranging repertoire, but has a special love for the constellation of lute, cello and voice. With Jonas Nordberg and Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann – who also contribute instrumental solos – she here revels in the dramatic and expressive potential offered by the combination, and by the music by these female composers and their English colleagues Henry Purcell and John Bennet.

[mobongo]

How the hell can this only have 837 views?

[steviesilver]

I could listen to this for hours! I have the CD but really would like it on vinyl...anyone know where I can get that? How about the full concert?? Would love to see that!!

[josierose]

What joy to have this pop up this morning. Beautiful soul, inside and out.

[pejo]

This girl has the most wonderful voice. A lyrical soprano of the new generation that is simply peerless. Outstanding!

[JimmyQuango]

Simply worldclass Jonas. Thanks for sharing this wonderful piece of art. Greetings from Hamburg, Jimmy

[--]

You are lovers of art to our great pleasure!