Queen Christina

Queen Christina opens Concerto Copenhagen‘s new series exploring the tides of Scandinavian Baroque music with a portrait, in sound, of one of the 17th century’s most extraordinary rulers.

Christina of Sweden — crowned at six, self-educated in law, philosophy, and seven languages, and famous for abdicating her throne at 28 to convert to Catholicism and reinvent herself as Rome’s most influential musical patron. Assembled around her the composers who effectively invented the trio sonata and the early concerto grosso: Corelli (her favorite instrumentalist, who dedicated his Op. 1 trio sonatas to her), Alessandro Scarlatti, Bernardo Pasquini, and Alessandro Stradella.

The program traces her musical life geographically and chronologically: French-style Swedish court dances from her Stockholm youth under her hovkapellmästare Andreas Düben, a virtuosic sonata by the English gambist William Young whom she met in Innsbruck en route to Rome, and the Roman-circle repertoire of Corelli, Scarlatti, Pasquini, and Stradella that defined her later salon. Capped by an instrumental arrangement of a Gesualdo madrigal she was known to have loved.

Recorded at Garnisons Kirke in Copenhagen under Lars Ulrik Mortensen, the album captures both the political and the emotional daring of a woman Pope Alexander VII once dismissed as “a queen without a realm, a Christian without faith, and a woman without shame.”

Concerto Copenhagen
Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Direction, Harpsichord & Organ