Barbara Strozzi

Strozzi: Il primo libro de madrigali 1644

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Songs from a Beautiful Mouth
Barbara Strozzi: Il primo libro de madrigali (1644)
Solomon’s Knot
Wigmore Hall, 4 Fenruary 2024

Solomon’s Knot has built an impressive reputation for its innovative approach to performing early music. Singing from memory, they incorporate subtle and very personal theatrical elements into their performances, whether bringing to life the individual characters in a Bach Passion or, as in this performance, stringing together a sequence of 17th-century madrigals into a believable storyline. The focus of this concert was the 1664 Il primo libro de madrigali the first publication by the extraordinary Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), a Venetian composer who had been a teenage pupil of Cavalli. The madrigals, in a variety of styles, set texts by her father, the poet Giulio Strozzi. He had nurtured her musical career from an early age, helped by the elevated social and cultural circles in which her family moved.

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Strozzi: Virtuosa of Venice

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Barbara Strozzi: Virtuosa of Venice
Fieri Consort
Fieri Records FIER003VOV. 67’18

The Fieri Consort was founded in 2012 by members of the Genesis Sixteen training programme to perform music from 16th and 17th-century Italian repertoire. This is their third CD and focusses on the music of the distinguished Italian composer Barbara Strozzi and her contemporaries Giovanni Girolamo Kasperger, Bartolomeo Selma y Salaverde, Benedetto Ferrari, Claudio Monteverdi. Strozzi is a fascinating musician, not least as a female musician in a man’s world. She had liberal and artistic parents – her father was the poet Giulio Strozzi. When she was 18 (in 1637) he founded the Accademia degli Unisoni specifically to display his daughter’s musical skills. She quickly became famed across Venice as a singer who could ‘steal the souls of her listeners through their ears with sweetness’. Continue reading →

Barbara Strozzi: Star of Venice

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Barbara Strozzi: Star of Venice
Orchestra & Choir of the Age of Enlightenment
Mary Bevan, Christian Curnyn
Kings Place, 10 January 2018

Barbara Strozzi: L’amante modesto, Pace arrabbiata, Lagrime Mie, Canto di bella bocca,
E pazzo il mio core, Le tre Gratie a Venere, Silenzio nocivo
Claudio Monteverdi: Volgendo il ciel, Il ballo delle ingrate

For several years now, Kings Place has selected a specific theme for each year under the banner of ‘Unwrapped’. Past examples have included Time Unwrapped, Cello Unwrapped, Baroque Unwrapped, and Minimalism Unwrapped. Their offering for 2019 is the enticing named Venus Unwrapped. The year-long series of around 60 concerts aims to “unlock the secret history of music by women”. It opened with a focus on Barbara Strozzi, one of the best known of the very few female composers of the Baroque era – or, indeed, of any era if musical history is to be believed. The painting below (The Viola da Gamba Player) is believed to be off Barbara Strozzi.

Strozzi.jpg

The distinguished conductor Christian Curnyn directed a group of singers and instrumentalists from the Orchestra & Choir of the Age of Enlightenment, with Mary Bevan as the main billed soloist, although several other singers had prominent roles.

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