Donna Barbara - Songs Of Barbara Strozzi

Berit Norbakken & Solmund Nystabakk

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Cat No: LWC1333

Release Date: 19 July 2024

Label: Lawo

Packaging Type: Digipak

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 7090020183053

Genres: Classical Vocal

Description
This album documents some of our meetings with Barbara Strozzi. In her time, and long after her death, Barbara Strozzi was a legendary performer, something that in her case has been highlighted far more than among her male colleagues. Why? In light of her extensive production and publishing activities, it seems almost absurd that she should not be considered a composer on par with any-one else, and one wonders if this too has to do with gender, if being a singer is so much less controversial for a woman than being a com-poser, that it has almost functioned as a "mitigating circumstance"?

As an artist, you have more direct connection to the music compared to experiencing it through someone else's rendition. The fact that Barbara Strozzi wrote so much of her music with her own performances in mind, means that her pieces be-come places or spaces where one can immerse oneself in another (her?) way of making music. In these spaces, Barbara's authority as a performer, and originator, of the music becomes avail-able to us as co-creators today.

The freedom and flexibility that come from accompanying oneself – as Barbara did – has been a model for our work in the duo format. This involves a coherence that gives us the freedom for spontaneous turns and variations along the way in the music, so that each performance becomes different. The continuous practice –singing and playing the music again and again, with openness to both planned and spontaneous variations, becomes more crucial to the audible result than one specific interpretation of each piece as a composition.

"The Norwegian duo's subtle poeticism and harmonic finesse suggest that less can be more." – Gramophone

'Berit Norbakken (soprano) and Solmund Nystabakk (lutes) aim to capture the style of Strozzi's own performances in which she would have accompanied herself. To this end, the Norwegian duo has nurtured a particularly close rapport between voice and lute, and the ensemble between the two is impeccable.' – BBC Music Magazine (4 stars)
Tracklisting