Kolb Neuropschology

This splendid and authoritative recital by Elissa Edwards and Richard Kolb of arias and cantatas from Barbara Strozzi’s last published opus showcases the dramatically coloured, highly charged power of the composer’s expressive toolkit, lit by the emerging harmonic language of the Baroque, influenced by Monteverdi through her teacher Cavalli, as a serious precedent for the future of opera. In his booklet notes Kolb comments that in Strozzi’s time a taste for ‘indulgence in the sensual pleasure of vocal melody or as an esoteric manifestation of nothingness’ was growing – the future indeed.

This splendid and authoritative recital by Elissa Edwards and Richard Kolb of arias and cantatas from Barbara Strozzi’s last published opus showcases the dramatically coloured, highly charged power of the composer’s expressive toolkit, lit by the emerging harmonic language of the Baroque, influenced by Monteverdi through her teacher Cavalli, as a serious precedent for the future of opera. In his booklet notes Kolb comments that in Strozzi’s time a taste for ‘indulgence in the sensual pleasure of vocal melody or as an esoteric manifestation of nothingness’ was growing – the future indeed.

This splendid and authoritative recital by Elissa Edwards and Richard Kolb of arias and cantatas from Barbara Strozzi’s last published opus showcases the dramatically coloured, highly charged power of the composer’s expressive toolkit, lit by the emerging harmonic language of the Baroque, influenced by Monteverdi through her teacher Cavalli, as a serious precedent for the future of opera. In his booklet notes Kolb comments that in Strozzi’s time a taste for ‘indulgence in the sensual pleasure of vocal melody or as an esoteric manifestation of nothingness’ was growing – the future indeed.

Robert Ballard was one of the most famous lutenist-composers of the first decades of the seventeenth century, during which the lute was the favored instrument of the Parisian aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie.