In the Garden of Eden with Joyce DiDonato

While the global Covid-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on all the people of the world, it has also provoked astonishing creativity among artists, those true seismographs of the human soul, often causing them to reconsider their fragile craft and seek new ways of expressing themselves. Such is the case with the American singer Joyce DiDonato who has taken to observing the world in a very different way during what she calls the "Great Pause". Away from the hustle and bustle of concerts, the stage and travel, she focused on the spectacle of a suddenly calmed nature, contemplating, she says, "the absolute perfection of the universe around us".

Her album Eden represents the unusual fruit of this reflection, through a musical choice that extends it, with a very accomplished search for inner tranquillity. Transcending styles and eras, Joyce DiDonato offers us a sort of musical garden of Eden in the company of the musicians of the il pomo d'oro ensemble, particularly inspired under the direction of Maxim Emelyanychev.

It all begins, naturally... one might be tempted to say, with The Unanswered Question, that astonishing piece by Charles Ives in which Joyce DiDonato substitutes the solo trumpet part (the question) with her own voice. The effect is striking.

The effect is striking. "What can I do on my own?" asks Joyce Di Donato, proposing some avenues of comfort through a selection of texts and music seeking the absolute, from Charles Ives to Handel, passing through composers and poets who usually never meet: Pietro Metastasio, Mahler, Wagner, Mathilde Wesendonck, Gluck, Copland, Biagio Marini, Friedrich Rückert, Cavalli, Rachel Portman and others who all pen in their own way the mystery and beauty of the world.

In 2012, Joyce DiDonato visited Qobuz to talk about her new album at the time and took look back on her dense career. Catch-up session:

LISTEN TO "EDEN" BY JOYCE DIDONATO ON QOBUZ