While the global Covid-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on people across the globe, it has also coaxed out astonishing artistic creativity, particularly from those artists that truly bring the depth of the human soul into question. The isolation of the pandemic has led them to reconsider their craft and seek new ways of expressing themselves. This is very much the case for American singer Joyce DiDonato, who has taken to observing the world in a very different way during what she calls the 'Great Break'. Away from the hustle and bustle of concerts, stage appearances and travelling, she’s focused on the nature of the sudden stillness that’s gripped the world. It’s given her a chance, she says, to contemplate "the absolute perfection of the universe that surrounds us".
This album presents the unusual fruit of this reflection through music, and it’s proven to be a very accomplished search for inner peace. Transcending styles and eras, Joyce DiDonato offers what can only be described as a musical Garden of Eden, and she’s invited the musicians from Il pomo d’oro (under the direction of Maxim Emelyanchev) over to visit.
It all begins, of course, with The Unanswered Question, an incredible piece by Charles Ives in which the solo trumpet (the question) is replaced with Joyce DiDonato’s vocals. The effect is striking. “What can I do on my own?” Joyce DiDonato asks herself, proposing some avenues of comfort through a selection of texts and music seeking wholeness… from Charles Ives and Handel to composers and poets you’d never expect to come together: Pietro Metastasio, Mahler, Wagner, Mathilde Wesendonck, Gluck, Copland, Biagio Marini, Friedrich Rückert, Cavalli, Rachel Portman and many others; they all sing about the mystery and beauty of the world in their own way. © François Hudry/Qobuz