Pergolesi stabat mater emma kirkby biography

Rowan Pierce needs no introduction, her voice of a purity matching that of the young Kirkby decades before her. Two mezzos, Catherine Carby and Alexandra Achilles Pouta, fill in the gaps registrally and in terms of age , both fine singers I hope to hear again soon, and both fine actresses. In this performance, everything took on extra layers of impact via symbiotic exchange across the centuries: trills were no mere decoration in the Pergolesi; they were oscillations of anguish.

Not even Bach could resist it, although he did not let it stand unchanged: His version enlivens the counterpoint and replaces the Latin poem - which depicts a grieving Virgin Mary at the foot of the cross - with a German adaptation of Psalm 51, where sin is the subject and the tone is considerably less emotional.

Pergolesi stabat mater emma kirkby biography

Were Emma Kirkby and Daniel Taylor singing straight Pergolesi here, we might find their interpretation cool and lacking in edge, but with Bach's more abstract text, the purity of the voices and the effortless delivery seems perfect. Taylor's performance of Vivaldi's Stabat Mater is also as intimate as it gets. Report an editorial error.

Report a technical issue. Archived from the original on 24 June Retrieved 18 February The Guardian. Rayfield Allied. Retrieved 27 January Hampstead Garden Opera website. Archived from the original on 14 November Retrieved 22 December External links [ edit ]. Wikimedia Commons has media related to Emma Kirkby. Handel Prize Laureates.

Recipients of the Queen's Medal for Music. Gramophone Hall of Fame. Authority control databases. As a classics student at Oxford and then a schoolteacher she sang for pleasure in choirs and small groups, always feeling most at home in Renaissance and Baroque Repertoire. She joined the Taverner Choir in and in began her long association with the Consort of Musicke.

Emma took part in the early Decca Florilegium recordings with both the Consort Of Musicke and the Academy of Ancient Music, at a time when most college-trained sopranos were not seeking a sound appropriate for early instruments.