Leonarda: A Portrait of Isabella Leonarda
£9.45
In stock - available for despatch within 1 working day
Despatch Information
This despatch estimate is based on information from both our own stock and the UK supplier's stock.
If ordering multiple items, we will aim to send everything together so the longest despatch estimate will apply to the complete order.
If you would rather receive certain items more quickly, please place them on a separate order.
If any unexpected delays occur, we will keep you informed of progress via email and not allow other items on the order to be held up.
If you would prefer to receive everything together regardless of any delay, please let us know via email.
Pre-orders will be despatched as close as possible to the release date.
Label: Brilliant Classics
Cat No: 96626
Format: CD
Number of Discs: 1
Genre: Vocal/Choral
Release Date: 12th August 2022
Contents
Works
Motetti (12), op.7Sacri concenti, op.3
Artists
Cappella ArtemisiaConductor
Candace SmithWorks
Motetti (12), op.7Sacri concenti, op.3
Artists
Cappella ArtemisiaConductor
Candace SmithAbout
Born into a noble family, Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704) entered the Ursuline Convent in the Piedmontese city of Novara at the age of 16. Having taken holy orders she lived there for the rest of her life as a religious sister, though the relatively liberal code of the Ursulines as a teaching order enabled her to travel from time to time. In due course she became the director of music in the convent and its Mother Superior. She evidently showed musical promise from an early age, further nurtured within the convent, as the first of her published collections of music dates from as early as 1640, when she was just 20 years old.
Another 15 such collections followed over the course of her long and industrious life: Masses, psalms, Magnificats, responsories, hymns, antiphons and litanies) as well as non liturgical pieces. In her own time, Isabella’s music was prized by connoisseurs: according to one French collector, ‘All the works of this illustrious and incomparable Isabella Leonarda are so beautiful, so charming, so brilliant, and at the same time so knowledgeable and so wise ... that my great regret is not to have them all.’
This recording provides a portrait of Isabella Leonarda’s vast and varied output, ranging from solo motets to a large-scale Psalm setting for voices, obbligato violins and basso continuo. O flammae is a highly expressive and sensual solo motet involving daring chromaticism and far-ranging tonalities. Previous recordings of the brilliant Salve Regina, scored for tenor, violins and continuo, have employed a male voice, whereas the all-female Capella Artemisia takes the kind of imaginative approach to performance that Isabella would have devised for herself in the convent out of necessity, where lower vocal parts would have been either transposed up or played on instruments. The album opens and closes with a pair of her most splendid and exuberant concerted liturgical works, Gloriosa Mater Domini and Dixit Dominus.
‘Brilliant Classics is to be congratulated for bringing this (and other) hidden treasures of the Baroque to audiences, and in the capable expert hands of the Cappella Artemisia, Meda’s fine music can come alive. This is one disc well worth acquiring.’ – Fanfare on ‘Lacrime Amare’
Error on this page? Let us know here
Need more information on this product? Click here