This is a concert with breath-taking and exciting arias for bass from 17th century Italy and England. The program starts with music from Italy and Claudio Monteverdi, who is seen as one of the founders of the baroque era in music. Apart from music for bass voice by this master, we get to hear music by two brilliant female composers: Isabella Leonarda and Francesca Caccini. It is music with great contrast, word painting, cascading coloratura and tension between light and dark.
In the second part of the program we focus on music from Chapel Royal. The music at the kings chapel exploded during the restoration after being prohibited during the reign of Cromwell, and composers such as Henry Purcell, John Blow and William Turner emerge. They all wrote music for John Gostling, who was the most popular bass of his time, and with the most prodigous range, and it is music for this singer that we are happy to present!
Staffan Liljas – bass
Peter Lönnerberg – organ
Jonas Nordberg – theorbo
Mime Brinkmann – cello
This program has been recorded on the album with the same name at Footprint Records. More information about the album is available here.
Sample
Program
[table “” not found /]Biographies
Staffan Liljas, bass, has been active as a soloist in concerts and operas in Sweden as well as abroad since he graduated from the University College of Opera in Stockholm in 2012. In the summer of 2019 he was seen as Polypheme in Handel’s Acis & Galatea at Confidencen. This overwhelmingly positively reviewed performance was broadcast in national Swedish television that same fall.
Peter Lönnerberg, organ, is a harpsichordist and organist in Rebaroque, the quartet Stockholm Barock and the baroque orchestra Tre Kronor. Among several CD-recordings can be mentioned a CD of early Italian baroque music for violin and harpsichord with Laura Vadjon, the concert master of the Croatian Baroque Orchestra (Aquarius Records) and ”Telemannia” with music by Telemann with Rebaroque (Proprius).
Jonas Nordberg, lute, is active as a soloist and chamber musician in over 25 countries around the world. He plays frequently with ensembles such as Concerto Köln, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Concerto Copenhagen, Mozarteum Orchester Salzburg, the Swedish Radio Symphonic Orchestra, among others. His latest solo CD with music by Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger was released in August 2019 on BIS Records.
Mime Brinkmann, cello, has won several prestigious international soloist competitions, among them Musica Antiqua Brugge. She frequently performs in concert houses and festivals in over 40 countries around the world as a soloist and in chamber ensembles. Her CD-produktioner are frequently reviewed by international magazines such as Gramophone, The Strad and Diapason.