In War And Peace - Harmony Through Music

LPA WAR

1. Handel, Jeptha: Scenes of Horror, scenes of woe (Storgè)
2. Leo, Andromaca: Prendi quel ferro, o barbaro! (Andromaca) world premiere recording
3. Handel, Giulio Cesare: Vani sono i lamenti…Svegliatevi nel core (Sesto)
4. Purcell, The Indian Queen: They tell us that you mighty powers above (Orazia)

LPB WAR

1. Handel, Agrippina: Pensieri, voi mi tormentate (Agrippina)
2. Purcell, Dido and Aeneas: Dido’s Lament Thy hand, Belinda…When I am laid in earth (Dido)
3. Handel, Rinaldo: Lascia ch’io pianga (Almirena)

LPC PEACE

1. Purcell, Bonduca or the British Heroine: Oh! Lead me to some peaceful gloom (Bonvica)
2. Handel, Rinaldo: Augelletti che cantate (Almirena)
3. Jommelli, Attilio Regolo: Sprezza il furor del vento (Attila) world premiere recording
4. Purcell, The Indian Queen: Why should men quarrel? (a girl)

LPC PEACE

1. Jommelli, Attilio Regolo: Par che di Giubilo (Attilio Regolo) world premiere recording
2. Handel, Susanna: Lead me, oh lead me to some cool retreat…Crystal streams in murmurs flowing (Susanna)
3. Monteverdi, Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria: Illustratevi, o cieli (Penelope)
4. Handel, Giulio Cesare: Da tempeste il legno infranto (Cleopatra)

Joyce DiDonato has described In War and Peace: Harmony through Music as perhaps her most personal project to date. With this themed collection of Baroque arias she asks the existential question: “In the midst of chaos, how do you find peace?” Her hope is “to steer conversation and discourse to peace and to help all of us find peace in our lives in a dynamic way.”

In War and Peace: Harmony through Music was recorded with Il Pomo d’Oro under its principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev. The programme comprises 15 arias divided into two sections: ‘War’ and ‘Peace’. Both contain music by Purcell and Handel – including, to close ‘War’, Dido’s dignified, but searing lament from Dido and Aeneas and Almirena’s haunting and heartbreaking ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ from Rinaldo. An excerpt from Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse is included in ‘Peace’, which concludes with Cleopatra’s spirited and defiantly optimistic ‘Da tempeste il legno infranto’ from Giulio Cesare. A further aria from Giulio Cesare is the bonus track for the album; it is Sesto’s touching apostrophe to hope, ‘Cara speme’, which Joyce DiDonato sings unforgettably on a floating whisper of breath.

In her search for peace and harmony, the American singer did not entirely desert her musicological quest, and the album also contains no fewer than three world premiere recordings: a ‘War’ aria from Andromaca by the Neapolitan composer Leonardo Leo (1694-1744), and two ‘Peace’ arias, from the operas Attila and Attilio Regolo, by another Neapolitan, Niccolò Jommelli (1714-1774).