Gramophone Magazine
June 2025
Editor's Choice

Les Kapsber'girls


After their explorations of Italian repertoire in Che fai tù? (MU-037) and French in Vous avez dit brunettes? (Alpha 761), Les Kapsber'girls, a vocal and instrumental ensemble founded by lutenist Albane Imbs in 2015, devotes its third album to Baroque women composers: hidden talents, unrevealed destinies. Few of these composers have had the opportunity to reveal their art, which is nevertheless very real. Recent research has made it possible to revive the fascinating works of composers such as Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677), Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704), Lucia Quinciani (1566-1611), Francesca Caccini (1587-1641), Antonia Bembo (c.1643-1715), and Francesca Campana (c.1615-c.1665), who spent sixty-nine years of her life in an Ursuline convent in Novara, although this did not prevent her from composing no fewer than two hundred works!

Strozzi: Il Primo Libro de Madrigali, a due, tre, quattro, e cinque voce: Sonetto. Proemio dell’opera
Bembo: In amor ci vuol ardir
Bembo: Amor mio, facciam la pace
Kapsberger: Corrente quinta
Strozzi: Il Primo Libro de Madrigali, a due, tre, quattro, e cinque voce: Canto di bella bocca
Kapsberger: Corrente quarta
Leonarda: Ad arma, o spiritus
Strozzi: Che si può fare
Campana, Francesca: Voi luci altere
Kapsberger: Gagliarda quarta
Caccini, F: Primo Libro delle Musiche: Ch’amor sio nudo
Kapsberger: Ballo Secondo
Campana, Francesca: Fanciulla vezzosa
Kapsberger: Corrente Prima
Bembo: Habbi pieta di me
Kapsberger: Ballo terzo
Campana, Francesca: Amor se questa sera
Pasquini, E: Toccata prima
Lucia Quiciani: Udite lagrimosi spiriti d’Auverno
Kapsberger: Gagliarda sesta