Heroines of Love and Loss: vocal chamber music from the 17th century

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Ruby Hughes’s soprano has an effortless beauty: pliant, subtly expressive, never forced. She captures the chaste fervour of the sacred works…Brinkmann and Nordberg proffer aptly spontaneous continuo... — BBC Music Magazine, June 2017, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 3rd Mar 2017
Catalogue No: BIS2248
Label: BIS
Length: 71 minutes

Gramophone Magazine

May 2017

Editor's Choice

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Kapsberger: Libro I d'intavolatura di chitarrone: Toccata Arpeggiata

Work length2:39

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Jonas Nordberg

Purcell: Bonduca or The British Heroine - incidental music, Z574

Work length3:56

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Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann

No. 17, O Lead Me to Some Peaceful Gloom

Track length3:56

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Excerpt, Vivaldi: Cello Sonata in G minor, RV42

Work length4:06

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Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann, Jonas Nordberg

I. Prelude. Largo

Track length4:06

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Bennet: Venus' birds whose mournful tunes

Work length3:19

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Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann

Excerpt, Vivaldi: Cello Sonata in G minor, RV42

Work length3:42

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Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann, Jonas Nordberg

II. Allemande. Andante

Track length3:42

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Strozzi: Cantate, ariette e duetti, Op. 2

Work length7:26

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Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann

No. 14, L'eraclito amoroso

Track length7:26

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Piccinini: Chaconne

Work length2:49

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Jonas Nordberg

Sessa: Occhi io vissi di voi

Work length2:06

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Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann

anon.: The Willow Song

Work length3:20

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Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann

Caccini, F: Il primo libro delle musiche

Work length7:29

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Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann

No. 3, Lasciatemi qui solo

Track length7:29

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Strozzi: Diporti di Euterpe Op. 7

Work length7:57

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Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann

No. 4, Lamento

Track length7:57

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Vivaldi: Cello Sonata in G minor, RV42

Work length8:02

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Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann, Jonas Nordberg

III. Sarabande. Largo

Track length4:38

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IV. Gigue. Allegro

Track length3:24

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Vizzana: Componimenti musicali de motetti concertati

Work length3:24

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Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann

O magnum mysterium

Track length3:24

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Excerpt, Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

Work length5:04

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Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann

When I Am Laid in Earth "Dido's Lament" (Arr. for Voice, Archlute & Cello)

Track length5:04

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anon.: O Death Rock me Asleep

Work length6:02

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Ruby Hughes, Jonas Nordberg, Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann

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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 and Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann– who also contribute instrumental solos –she here revels in the dramatic and expressive potential offered by this trio combination, and by the music by these female composers and their English colleagues Henry Purcell and John Bennet.

Reviews

June 2017

Ruby Hughes’s soprano has an effortless beauty: pliant, subtly expressive, never forced. She captures the chaste fervour of the sacred works…Brinkmann and Nordberg proffer aptly spontaneous continuo realisations, varying timbre and texture and adding discreet embellishments according to the poetic moment. Their playing in the instrumental pieces is equally refined

May 2017

[Ruby Hughes] has a warm, almost mellow voice, well suited to this enterprising collection of 17th-century songs…the striking feature of this disc is the array of powerful pieces by Italian women composers…to all them Ruby Hughes brings an exemplary understanding and stylishness.

May 2017

With the expansive church acoustic, concept and execution alike prove admirable.

Opera Now June 2017

Hughes has a pellucid soprano of arresting beauty and her phrasing is sophisticated in its very simplicity. The soprano is joined by Mime Ymahiro Brinkmann on cello and Jonas Norbderg, and between the three of them they conjure not just ravishing sounds but a rather magical atmosphere.

Heroines of Love and Loss

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