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

• Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (1580-1651):
• 1 Toccata Arpeggiata 02:31
• Henry Purcell (1659-1695):
• 2 Bonduca, Z. 574, "The British Heroine": No. 17. O lead me to some peaceful gloom 03:53
• Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741):
• 3 Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 14, No. 9, RV 42: I. Prelude: Largo 04:01
• John Bennet (1575-1614):
• 4 Venus' birds, whose mournful tunes 03:15
• Antonio Vivaldi:
• 5 Cello Sonata in G Minor, Op. 14, No. 9, RV 42: II. Allemande: Andante 03:40
• Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677):
• 6 Cantate, ariette e duetti, Op. 2: No. 14. L'eraclito amoroso 07:21
• Alessandro Piccinini (1566-1638):
• 7 Chaconne 02:44
• Claudia Sessa (1570-1619):
• 8 Occhi io vissi di voi 02:03
• Anonymous (17th Century):
• 9 The Willow Song 03:14
• Francesca Caccini (1587-1640):
• 10 Il primo libro delle musiche: No. 3. Lasciatemi qui solo 07:20
• Barbara Strozzi:
• 11 Diporti di Euterpe, Op. 7: No. 4. Lamento 07:49
• Antonio Vivaldi:
• 12 Cello Sonata in G Minor, RV 42: III. Sarabande: Largo 04:36
• 13 Cello Sonata in G Minor, RV 42: IV. Gigue: Allegro 03:21
• Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana (1590-1662):
• 14 Componimenti musicali de motetti concertati: O magnum mysterium 03:18
• Henry Purcell:
• 15 Dido & Aeneas, Z. 626: Dido and Aeneas, Z. 626, Act III Scene 2: When I am laid in earth, "Dido's Lament" (arr. for voice, archlute and cello) 04:56
• Anonymous (16th Century):
• 16 O Death Rock Me Asleep 05:00
• Total Runtime 01:09:02

Info for Heroines of Love & Loss

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.

Ruby Hughes, soprano
Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann, cello
Jonas Nordberg, theorbo, lute

No biography found.

Booklet for Heroines of Love & Loss