Various Artists - Music for a Goddess / Various - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The duo's second album on Solo Musica celebrates the song repertoire of women composers from Romanticism to Contemporary Music with 24 songs by 24 women composers. The Swiss soprano Franziska HEINZEN and British-Polish-German pianist Benjamin MEAD set out to research the work of women composers for Clara SCHUMANN's bicentenary in 2019 - and discovered a valuable treasure of relatively unknown music. Beginning with a life journey through refreshing spring feelings, the album goes on to describe painful hours of loneliness and uncertainty as well as anxious premonitions of death and dark fears. Five examples of self-confident female characters, whose experiences are concluded with wiser, reflections on life, as seen retrospectively. Album Tracks 1. June Twilight 2. Heure Exquise 3. Laue Sommernacht 4. Ah, Love, But a Day 5. Am Strande 6. Mélodies (10), for voice & piano~Le Regard Éternel 7. Hilf Mir! 8. Mélodies (4) for voice & piano~Le Bonheur S'Effeuille et Passe 9. Insel der Vergessenheit 10. Dying Is Fine) But Death 11. Warum Sind Denn Die Rosen So Blass 12. Night Dances~Sleep, Mourner, Sleep! 13. Ballades (4) de Paul Fort~Le Diable Dans la Nuit 14. Yellow Leaves~Farewell 15. Alma Phantasien~Nur der Seinen Leben 16. Ophelia's Song 17. Loreley 18. Poèmes (5) for voice & piano~Le Sommeil de Leïlah 19. Song of a Nightclub Proprietress 20. Ewige Liebe 21. Écouter et ne Rien Entendre 22. Ob Ich Manchmal Dein Gedenke 23. Ma Première Lettre 24. Remembrance

Album Tracks 1. Ave Maris Stella 2. Lullaby 3. I. Auyuittuq 4. II. Winter Sky 5. Salem, 1692 6. Hear My Prayer 7. When You Are Old 8. No. 1. Meditating at Midnight 9. No. 2. on the Spirit of the Heart As Moon-Disk 10. No. 3. Late Indian Summer 11. No. 4. Black Hair and Red Cheeks 12. Ave Maria 13. Northern Lights 14. Kyrie 15. Sanctus 16. Agnus Dei 17. Celebremus!

Jealousy, tenderness, loneliness and longing, desire, unattainability, sensuality, frustration, love, lust and loss in all their configurations come together in OSSESSO. The old masters allow us no escape from the painfully vivid portrayals of their experiences. Tromboncino and Gesualdo exemplify the extremes of which obsessiveness is capable, in their music as in their lives; in this sense, they are precursors to Phil Spector, Sid Vicious, or Bertrand Cantat. This is a selection of absolutely touching madrigals about love and affliction that represent the kaleidoscope of feelings and emotions of their composers, be it in the late Middle Ages or in the Renaissance, interspersed with some instrumental pieces.