Donne Barocche. (Sound Recording Reviews).(Women Composers of the Baroque Period)(Sound Recording Review)

Donne Barocche. Bizzarrie Armoniche; Roberta Invernizzi. Opus 111 OP 30341, 2001.

Subtitled "Women Composers of the Baroque Period," this delightful collection of instrumental chamber works and solo vocal pieces offers compositions by Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Barbara Strozzi, Antonia Bembo, Rosa Giacinta Badalla, Isabella Leonarda, and Bianca Maria Meda, all of them active during the second half of the seventeenth century. The program is nicely varied and includes two violin sonatas, several solo motets, a brief cantata for voice and continuo, a selection from Jacquet de la Guerre's D-Minor Harpsichord Suite, and a few other brief and miscellaneous vocal works, all sung beautifully by soprano Roberta Invernizzi. When the point of a recording is to showcase compositions by women, critical evaluation can be something of a political minefield--lavish praise may be construed as evidence that the reviewer approached the recording ...