Simone Kermes – Love (2016) [Qobuz FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

A collection of beautiful baroque and renaissance love songs that reflect the versatility of love – passionate, dramatic and addictive by the most popular composers of this time, from Monteverdi, Purcell, Cesti to Merula and Dowland. The arrangement, cast of instruments, and recording set up is as such that the “pop song” quality, the contemporary and eternal spirit, the immediacy of these compositions is revealed. All sung with the unique legato, pure, and silver quality that makes Simone Kermes’ voice so special. This is Simone Kermes’ most intimate and personal album yet.

Simone Kermes is a dramatic coloratura soprano and multi-award winner. For her solo albums she has received a number of international awards, such as the annual award of the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik, the Echo Klassik award for 2011 Female Singer of the Year, the Diapason d`Or, Midem Award, Choc Le Monde de la Musique and Gramophone magazine’s Recording of the Month. In April 2013 she received one of Russia’s highest cultural awards, the Golden Mask, for her performances as Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the Tchaikovsky State Academic Theatre in Perm.

After a flirtation with the 19th century, soprano Simone Kermes is back on familiar Baroque ground, with a new collection that is once again organized around a theme rather than a place or time or technique. Indeed, Kermes is resolutely not after an ideal of historical performance; she draws together material from four different national traditions (English, French, Spanish, and Italian), and she has one of the players in her small La Magnifica Comunità orchestra rearrange pieces at will to fit the sequence of events in the program. Kermes has the chops to carry off this kind of freedom. Her voice is utterly distinctive and may be a matter of taste, but there are some wonderful pieces here, each of them introduced in the booklet by a trio of adjectives (“Clandestine love – bashfulness – inexperience,” for Michel Lambert’s Sombres déserts, track six). There is a striking range of moods and of vocal qualities to go with them. The program ends with and in some ways builds to Purcell’s “When I am laid in earth,” which receives a performance of great gravity, but equally interesting if not more so are the obscure pieces that Kermes shapes into a tour of the dangerous emotion. Sample “Che si può fare? (“Yearning – compassion – despair,” track five) by Barbara Strozzi, who is still more talked about than performed; it’s a deliciously messy and modern piece. This is a very strong recital, as well executed as it is original.

Tracklist:
01 – Claudio Monteverdi: Lamento della ninfa: Amor, amor
02 – Tarquinio Merula: Folle è ben che si crede
03 – Antoine Boesset: Quelles beautés, ô mortels (Récit de Mnémosyne)
04 – Luis de Briceno: Ay amor loco
05 – Barbara Strozzi: Che si può fare?
06 – Michel Lambert: Sombres déserts
07 – Henry Purcell: If Love’s a Sweet Passion
08 – Francesco Manelli: Grida l’alma a tutt’ ore
09 – Antoine Boesset: Frescos ayres del prado
10 – Tarquinio Merula: Chi vuol ch’io m’innamori
11 – Tarquinio Merula: Chi mi tolse alle sfere! … Lumi potete piangere
12 – John Eccles: I Burn, I Burn
13 – Antonio Cesti: Disserratevi abissi
14 – John Eccles: Restless in Thoughts
15 – John Dowland: Now, O Now I Needs Must Part
16 – Antonio Cesti: Piu bella maestà … Dormi, dormi ben mio
17 – Henry Purcell: Thy Hand Belinda … When I Am Laid in Earth (Dido’s Lament)