Gallina Vishnevskaya

This Da Vinci Classics album affords us the delight of enjoying a journey in time and space, through the medium of Renaissance lute music. The European Renaissance is certainly a period many of us would like to visit in a time-capsule, were it available. It was a period of extraordinary flourishing of the arts – visual, musical, literary – and of culture in general. It was a period when knowledge, philology, philosophy, and religious thought experienced major developments. It was also a period not untouched by bloody wars and battles, heavy epidemics, and profound crises. Still, we owe to the Renaissance much of what our modern culture is; and we can regret having lost much of what the Renaissance bequeathed to us – in terms of sources, artworks, but also of values, expertise, and knowledge.

This Da Vinci Classics album affords us the delight of enjoying a journey in time and space, through the medium of Renaissance lute music. The European Renaissance is certainly a period many of us would like to visit in a time-capsule, were it available. It was a period of extraordinary flourishing of the arts – visual, musical, literary – and of culture in general. It was a period when knowledge, philology, philosophy, and religious thought experienced major developments. It was also a period not untouched by bloody wars and battles, heavy epidemics, and profound crises. Still, we owe to the Renaissance much of what our modern culture is; and we can regret having lost much of what the Renaissance bequeathed to us – in terms of sources, artworks, but also of values, expertise, and knowledge.

Galina Pavolovna Vishnevskaya became the most exciting soprano to emerge in the Soviet Union after World War II. She had a major career on the Bolshoi stage, cruelly cut short due to the political beliefs of her and her husband.