Formosa Mea by Tone Wik

Various composers

Tone Wik

Formosa Mea

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Lawo Classics
UPC: 7090020181219
Catnr: LWC 1109
Release date: 04 November 2016
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Label
Lawo Classics

UPC
7090020181219

Catalogue number
LWC 1109

Release date
04 November 2016

"... the music is of high quality and the programme includes several little-known items."

Music Web International, 03-7-2017

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

Press

About the album

Formosa mea (My beauty), an expression taken from Song of Solomon, recurs as a theme in a number of the songs on Tone Wik's new album. The sensual texts are an homage to the Virgin Mary. Her chaste, unattainable beauty is the focus of adoration, lending a quality of innocence to the erotic content of the texts. The music is from a period when the church was in the process of accepting the musical influence of street music and folk theatre, which changed the style of church music. 'Formosa mea' features two seldon-performed Christmas cantatas, written by the female composer Franscesca Caccini and her colleague, Bonifatio Gratiani. Soprano Tone Wike has specialized for years in music of the BAroque period. She is in frequent demand as soloist and performs regularly with early music musicians and ensembles.

"Formosa mea" enthält zwei selten ausgeführte Weihnachtskantaten, geschrieben von der weiblichen Komponistin Franscesca Caccini und ihrem Kollegen Bonifatio Gratiani.

Artist(s)

Tone Wik (vocals)

Tone Wik was born in Oslo, and studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Later, she specialised in early music at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague. Her repertoire spans music from the Middle Ages to contemporary music, but Tone Wik is especially noted for her interpretation of baroque music. Her performances have been reviewed in international newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, BBC Music Magazine and Gramophone. Her two previous solo CDs, "Dolcissimo Sospiro" and "Bellezza Crudel" gained recognition in both Norwegian and international media.
Her singing of composers such as d’India and Monteverdi was among the best I have ever heard. (Andrew O’Connor International Record Review, June 2009). Formosa Mea is her third solo CD.
Tone Wik has performed as a soloist with conductors, musicians and early music ensembles such as Joshua Rifkin, Andrew Lawrence-King, Harry Christophers, Shalev Adel, Andrew Manze, Alfredo Bernardini, Ryo Terakado, Ronald Brautigam, The Bach Ensemble-New York, Il Gardellino, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Norwegian Baroque Orchestra, Concerto Copenhagen and Barokkanerne. She has performed at many international festivals such as Tage Alter Musik Regensburg, Festival van Vlaanderen Brugge - MAFestival, Händel-Festspiele Halle, Barockfest Münster, Israel Festival, Brezice Festival, Musicantica Trento, Stockholm Early Music Festival, Oslo Kammermusikkfestival, Bergen International Festival and Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival. She also works as a singing teacher and choir conductor.

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Composer(s)

Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi was an Italian composer and conductor, whose work marked the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Moreover, he composed the earliest operas that are still regularly performed today.
Monteverdi worked as maestro di capella at the court of the duke of Mantua and at the San Marco in Venice. He was a famous musician during his lifetime, but his compositions also provoked opposition. The conservative theorist Giovanni Maria Artusi criticized the technical flaws in some of Monteverdis madrigals. The composer defended himself by making a distinction between two styles of composition, the prima prattica, in which the harmony is dominant, and the seconda prattica , in which the music is subordinate to the text. Monteverdi championed the seconda prattica, and eventually broke with traditional Renaissance polyphony and began to employ the basso continuo and recitative to do better justice to the text.
Monteverdi wrote amongst others eight books of madrigals, two collections of liturgical music and various operas. The opera L'incoronazione di Poppea is considered a culminating point of Monteverdi's work. It contains tragic, romantic, and comic scenes and warmer melodies than previously heard.

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Girolamo Frescobaldi

Girolamo Frescobaldi was an Italian composer and organist of the Renaissance and Early Baroque. In 1608 he was named organist of the St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, after he visitied the Southern Netherlands in 1607-1608, in particular Brussels and Antwerp. From 1628 to 1933, he worked for the court of Ferdinand II of Tuscany, after which he resided back in Rome. His most popular work is his Fiori Musicali (1635), which is a collection of largely liturgical organ compositions to perform during mass. Johann Sebastian Bach owned a self-transcribed copy of this collection. Furthermore, Frescobaldi composed ricercars, canzones, toccatas (both for organ and harpsichord), four-part fantasies, madrigals, motets, and two masses for two four-voiced choirs and B.C. Frescobaldi's influence on keyboard music has been substantial....

His most popular work is his Fiori Musicali (1635), which is a collection of largely liturgical organ compositions to perform during mass. Johann Sebastian Bach owned a self-transcribed copy of this collection. Furthermore, Frescobaldi composed ricercars, canzones, toccatas (both for organ and harpsichord), four-part fantasies, madrigals, motets, and two masses for two four-voiced choirs and B.C.

Frescobaldi's influence on keyboard music has been substantial. This was realised by his many publications (which were under his published under his own supervision) as well as the many young musicians he trained. The most important of which of composer Johann Jakob Froberger, who eventually became the organist at the court of the Emperor in Vienna.

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Biagio Marini

Biagio Marini (1594-1663) has possibly studied with his uncle, the Domincan Giacinto Bondioli. Marini's works were printed and were influential in European musical life. He travelled his entire life, worked in Brussels and over thirty years in Neuburg an der Donau and in Düsseldorf, with Monteverdi in Venice at St Mark's Basilica, and in cities like Padua, Parma, Ferrara, Milan, Bergamo, and Brescia.There is evidence that he married three times and fathered five children. He died in Venice.
Although he wrote both instrumental and vocal music, he is better known for his innovative instrumental compositions. He contributed to the early development of the string idiom by expanding the performance range of the solo and accompanied violin and incorporating slur, double and even triple stopping, and the first explicitly notated tremolo effects into his music. He made contributions to most of the contemporary genres and investigated unusual compositional procedures, like constructing an entire sonata without a cadence (as in his Sonata senza cadenza). Many of his works have been lost, but those that have survived time demonstrate inventiveness, lyrical skill and harmonic boldness. In addition to his violin works, he wrote music for the cornett, dulcian, and sackbut.

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Tarquinio Merula

Alessandro Piccinini

Sigismondo d'India'>Sigismondo d'India

Francesca Caccini

Stefano Bernardi

Alessandro Grandi

Bonifatio Gratiani

Press

... the music is of high quality and the programme includes several little-known items.
Music Web International, 03-7-2017

Some of the selections are among the best known examples of this repertoire, including Monteverdi’s ‘Exulta fila Sion’ and Alessandro Grandi’s ‘O quam tu pulchra es’.
American Record Guide, 28-6-2017