With ‘Adriana’, Brilliant Classics releases a special production that aims to be both a book with a CD and a CD with a book. Together, they tell the extraordinary story of Adriana vanden Bergh (Berch), an Amsterdam prodigy on the recorder in the Golden Age. She was only 13 or even 12 when the music publisher Paulus Matthijsz dedicated a book of music to her in 1644, Der goden fluit-hemel (The Gods’ Recorder Heaven). Adriana’s identity remained a mystery for centuries. Until musicologist Thiemo Wind not only discovered who his was, but also that she was portrayed by none other than Jacob Backer, an illustrious contemporary and fellow townsman of Rembrandt. This is one of the finest portraits of the Golden Age. In the book, Thiemo Wind reveals her turbulent life story in fifty illustrated chapters. Her biography reads like an exciting novel. On the CD, Erik Bosgraaf and his Ensemble Cordevento play both Italian (Rossi, Uccellini, Merula and others) and Dutch works (Padbrué, Huygens, Van Eyck, Sweelinck, De Vois and others) played and loved by Adriana. Thus, the child prodigy also comes alive musically, on a CD that contains 85 (!) minutes of music. Cordevento has expanded for the occasion to a line-up of two recorders, violin, cello/gamba, theorbo and harpsichord. Naturally, a leading role is given to the recorder. This release is in line with Erik Bosgraaf’s widely acclaimed Brilliant Classics recording of Jacob van Eyck’s Der fluyten lust-hof, with which he broke through internationally in 2007 as one of the world’s greatest recorder virtuosos. Van Eyck’s music was printed in the mid-17th century by the same Paulus Matthijsz who published Adriana’s Flute Heaven. The two repertoire areas are linked in every conceivable way, as Thiemo Wind shows in the book.
