Julia Lezhneva / Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini HANDEL

The young Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva has been described as possessing an “angelic voice” (The New York Times) with “pure tone” (Opernwelt) and “flawless technique” (The Guardian). They are big claims, and she has been living up to them ever since she created a sensation at the Classical Brit awards at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 2010, singing Rossini’s Fra il padre at the invitation of Dame Kiri Te Kanawa. 

Born into a family of geophysicists on Sakhalin Island in 1989, she began playing the piano and singing at the age of five. She graduated from the Gretchaninov Music School and continued her vocal and piano studies at the Moscow Conservatory. At 17 she came to international attention winning the Elena Obraztsova International Competition, and at 18 shared the concert stage with Juan Diego Flórez at the opening of the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro. In 2008 she began studying with tenor Dennis O’Neill in Cardiff, completing her training under Yvonne Kenny at London’s Guildhall School. She has also attended masterclasses with Elena Obraztsova in St. Petersburg, Alberto Zedda in Pesaro and Thomas Quasthoff in Verbier. In 2009 she won first prize at the Mirjam Helin International Singing Competition in Helsinki and the following year she took first prize at the Paris International Opera Competition, the youngest entrant in each competition’s history. 

The emphasis for this album is very much on youth and prodigious talent: at 25, Julia Lezhneva is ideally suited to the soprano arias of the young Handel, who arrived in Italy from Germany as a 21 year old at the beginning of the 18th century.

She has the perfect partners in Il Giardino Armonico and Giovanni Antonini whose recordings of music from the Italian baroque are celebrated for their “fizzing virtuosity” and “exquisite cushion of sound” (The Independent). For some tracks the orchestra is led by Dmitry Sinkovsky, the extraordinary Russian violinist and one of today’s most versatile Baroque musicians.

The music encompasses the best of Handel’s operatic and religious works from his years in Florence and Rome: the operas Rodrigo and Agrippina and the oratorios Il Trionfo and La Resurrezione as well as the complete Salve Regina and soprano solo from Dixit Dominus. Best known is the radiant “Lascia la spina” from Il Trionfo and its later incarnation as “Lascia ch'io pianga” from the opera Rinaldo.

The recording was made in the famously musical and historic Italian city of Cremona in the beautiful auditorium of the Museo del Violino.