Cristina Comencini Lucy

In a very specific sense in 16th- and 17th-century Spain and again in today’s Mexico (and elsewhere in Latin America) the Spanish term son denotes a particular genre of music with certain common traits including a close association with dance, text composed of several verses (coplas) and a fundamental harmonic pattern unique to each son.

L'apparition de compositrices en Italie au Seicento, siècle d'un extraordinaire bouillonnement musical, est un phénomène unique par son ampleur et la qualité des musiques qui nous sont parvenues. Qui ne connaît la compositrice et cantatrice virtuose Barbara Strozzi, ou encore Francesca Caccini, première femme a avoir composé des opéras ? De même, les œuvres de Caterina Assandra et Isabella Leonarda, empreintes d'un réel mysticisme, sont saisissantes. La cantatrice Maria-Cristina Kiehr, à la voix d'une extrême sensualité, accompagnée du Concerto Soave de Jean-Marc Aymes, nous plongent au cœur de la vitalité artistique de l'Italie du Seicento.

Sigismondo d'India, 'nobleman of Palermo', as he called himself, composer, singer and poet, was a true child of dawning century. Like his great contemporary Monteverdi, he succeeded in integrating polyphony into the new monodic style. But it is above all in his Musiche da cantar solo that he showed his measure as an innovator. These madrigals for solo voice, selected from around a hundred works he wrote in this genre, provide dazzling evidence of the fact.

Par l'Ensemble Vocal De Profundis, dir. Cristina García Banegas. L'œuvre de Francisco López Capillas constitue, sans aucun doute, le sommet du style polychoral baroque en Nouvelle-Espagne. Directement inspirée de Clément Janequin, sa « Missa de Batalla » fait s'opposer avec fracas les chœurs et les percussions. Elle est, ici, entourée des plus belles pages des compositeurs européens qui étaient ses contemporains, et que l'on chantait également dans les cathédrales de Puebla et de Mexico dont l'édification venait à peine de se terminer. Toute la somptuosité sonore de l'ancien et du Nouveau Monde.

L'apparition de compositrices en Italie au Seicento, siècle d'un extraordinaire bouillonnement musical, est un phénomène unique par son ampleur et la qualité des musiques qui nous sont parvenues. Qui ne connaît la compositrice et cantatrice virtuose Barbara Strozzi, ou encore Francesca Caccini, première femme a avoir composé des opéras ? De même, les œuvres de Caterina Assandra et Isabella Leonarda, empreintes d'un réel mysticisme, sont saisissantes. La cantatrice Maria-Cristina Kiehr, à la voix d'une extrême sensualité, accompagnée du Concerto Soave de Jean-Marc Aymes, nous plongent au cœur de la vitalité artistique de l'Italie du Seicento.

"I couldn't have imagined a better constellation for my first album!" says Cristina Gómez Godoy about her first recording. She has chosen this repertoire because these pieces made her fall in love with the instrument and music. As a musician in Daniel Barenboim's Berlin-based orchestra, she feels very privileged to have recorded her first album with him, accompanied by the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, with whom she has played for many years.

“I couldn’t have imagined a better constellation for my first album!” says Cristina Gómez Godoy about her first recording. She has chosen this repertoire because these pieces made her fall in love with the instrument and music. As a musician in Daniel Barenboim’s Berlin-based orchestra, she feels very privileged to have recorded her first album with him, accompanied by the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, with whom she has played for many years.

Most of Monteverdi's motets for one voice were among his late publications, like the celebrated Selva morale e spirituale (Venice, 1640). An aboluste master of what he called the seconda prattica, he demonstrated in these pieces all of the skill he had acquired over the years in writing for the solo voice. Just as he had taken the madrigal to its peak of perfection, Monteverdi here realises the achievements of the Baroque period in this form of religious music inherited from the early centuries of polyphonic writing. The performers have striven to revive the typically Venetian context of the time, placing these sublime works in a framework of instrumental toccatas and sinfonias by his contemporaries Marini, Merulo and Antegnati.