Tone Wik - Dolcissimo Sospiro (2003)

An attractive debut disc for the soprano Tone Wik, Dolcissimo sospiro offers a program of early Baroque solo songs, accompanied by a small ensemble. Several have texts by Ottavio Rinuccini, the Florentine poet closely associated with the beginnings of opera, while others date from a few decades later. In addition, there is a set of seven new settings of Rinuccini texts by the American-born Dutch composer Ron Ford. Wik is from Norway, not a country generally known as a performance center for repertoires of earlier eras. She studied voice in Oslo and became interested in singing early music, with (in the words of the liner notes) its "almost instrumental clarity of sound." As one might guess from that characterization, Wik's interpretations are on the cool side. Her voice is light, agile, and elegant, and she's especially effective on several of the slightly later pieces on the disc, those that feature Baroque tunefulness in full flower. On Hor ch'è tempo di dormire, a remarkable "canzonetta spirituale" by Tarquinio Merula that features as delicious an example as one could wish of secular love imagery being applied to a sacred theme, she displays exquisite control over tone and mood as the work moves through several contrasting short ground-like bass lines. On some of the works that are closer to early opera, one might wish for more muscular ornamentation and more of a sense of drama, and the accompanying players, though precise, are rather monotonous. The Ford work, despite sharing texts and instrumentation with the other pieces on the album, fails to make much of a connection with them. Nevertheless, this is a distinctive and promising debut recording, well worth the money for a few performances all by themselves.