Violinist Anna Urpina: ‘Baroque women composers are still underrepresented’
Catalan violinist Anna Urpina plays both Baroque and modern violin and studied with Vartan Manoogian and Vera Beths, among others. In December 2025 her second CD, Le chant des muses, was released. It features music by female composers from the Baroque period alongside contemporary pieces by Zulema de la Cruz and Helena Cánovas.
At the time of our interview, Anna Urpina (1988) is heavily pregnant with her first child, whom she expects around the time of the release of her second CD. Nevertheless, she takes the time to answer my questions. When I send her some additional questions in mid-November, she has just given birth to her daughter Carla. Yet she responds quickly to my email; music is clearly her passion. That wasn’t always the case, she says: ‘At home, we listened to the radio, watched television and played vinyl records – from classical to rock, opera and singer-songwriters – but no one played an instrument. I’m the only one who went into music.’
Raised in Vic, some seventy kilometres north of Barcelona, she became captivated by classical music by chance: ‘When I was four years old, my school took part in a singing competition between all the schools in Catalonia, in the magnificent Palau Música Barcelona. We didn’t win, but singing in such a sacred place full of culture and art, in the magic of that hall, felt like a dream come true. I think my subconscious decided right then and there that I wanted to be a musician.’
Vartan Manoogian
At the age of six, she went to the Escola de Música de Vic, where the director recommended that she take up the violin. ‘When I got my hands on the instrument, it was love at first sight!’ From the age of twelve, she also took summer courses with Vartan Manoogian, following him to the United States in 2006: ‘He was a great violinist, a wonderful teacher and perhaps an even better pedagogue. He always knew exactly what a student needed at any given moment and how to achieve it. One of his favourite sayings was: Shut up and play! Unfortunately, I was only able to study with him for a year, because he died in 2007.’
Vartan Manoogian
She then continued her studies with a string of teachers at various conservatories in Europe. Urpina explains her thirst for learning: ‘I was young and it is very enriching to get to know new people, other cultures and other schools, so after one master’s degree I wanted to do another, and so on. But the most important teacher for me has always been Manoogian, followed by Vera Beths.’
She studied with Beths at the Conservatoire of Amsterdam from 2014 to 2015. ‘Vera is a bit like Vartan. She was also able to assess perfectly what I needed at any given moment and taught me to solve technical and musical problems with the help of exercises and technique. I did a lot of scales and learned a lot from her, especially from her way of playing, which I found very inspiring.’
Baroque violin
Her interest in the baroque violin arose during a summer course at Música Antigua Daroca: ‘I had developed severe tendonitis due to stress and a busy concert schedule, and feared I would never be able to play again. I had to rethink my entire career and went to Daroca as a distraction. To my surprise, I found that I could play the baroque violin with ease. I decided to seriously immerse myself in early and Baroque music and master the corresponding violin technique.’
After a while she again took up the modern violin, and has since combined both instruments in concerts and on CDs. This is no easy feat, given the completely different styles, tunings and bowing techniques. Urpina: ‘It is indeed terribly difficult, because what you learn on one instrument, you have to unlearn on the other. It took me years to master that. Nowadays, it’s a little easier to make the “click” and switch violins. But it remains difficult to do this during a live concert; it’s not only physically demanding, but also mentally exhausting.’
Nevertheless, for years now she has been naturally placing music from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries alongside works from the Baroque period. Why? ‘I just love it, even though it’s tough and you have to practise twice as hard. Playing the Baroque violin has broadened my musical vision of modern music and vice versa; they complement each other!’
From all male to all female
While her debut album, released in 2022 and simply titled Anna Urpina: Baroque-Modern, was entirely devoted to men, Urpina focuses on women on her second CD: ‘It struck me that many pieces by female composers from the classical and romantic periods had been rediscovered in recent years, but wondered what had become of all those compositions by women from the Baroque period.’ She set about searching through libraries in Paris and Venice. ‘After three years of intensive research, I found these unknown names, whose voices had been silenced by history.’
This does not apply to all composers, however: Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Isabella Leonarda, Francesca Caccini and Maddalena Casulana were very successful in their own time and their work has been performed more and more frequently in recent years. It does apply to Mademoiselle Duval, Anne Guédon de Presles, Mademoiselle Buttier, Lady Mary Dering and Marieta Priuli, of whom only a few compositions are known. Only one composition by the Spanish nun Gracia Baptista has survived, Conditor Alme, a setting for violin and theorbo of the Latin hymn of the same name.
Tribute to brave women
Urpina decided to dedicate an entire album to these ladies, ‘because I think they deserve to be known. Their music deserves to be heard after all the struggles and difficulties they faced at the time simply because they were women. It is my small tribute to brave women who decided to fight to express their emotions and feelings, in the hope that their music could be published and played.
She defends the subtitle ‘forgotten music by female composers’ with conviction: ‘I don’t want to be described as a female violinist either, and I don’t think it was any different in the past. But in this case, I think it’s important to restore their heritage and make it clear that these women existed and left their mark.
She endorses my impression that after #MeToo, there was a hype around female composers that did not always seem to be intrinsically and qualitatively motivated: ‘Indeed, one might wonder whether orchestras, artistic directors, musicians and conductors programme their music because they truly believe in it, or simply because they want to meet the requirement of a male/female ratio. In my opinion, this should be self-evident, but it should be based on the motivation that quality and level are not inferior to each other.’
Transcribing and sifting
The album features twelve women. How did she make her selection? ‘It was quite a puzzle. One discovery in the archives led to another, and that’s how I discovered more and more composers. Then I had to transcribe all those manuscripts because they were written in obsolete clefs, contained errors, the ink had faded, and such.’
After that, I had to decide what was good and what wasn’t. It felt like a great responsibility to determine which compositions were worthy of being presented to the world. Once I had done that, I still had to place the pieces in a meaningful context that works both programmatically and harmonically.’
The album opens with the extremely lively Sonata for violin and basso continuo opus 16 number 12 by Isabella Leonarda (1620-1704). Urpina, harpsichordist Daniel Oyarzabal and cellist Nicola Brovelli play with great passion. They strike an excellent balance between rhythmic passages with firm accents and more subdued moments, in which the violin sometimes sounds almost like a human voice.
Francesca Caccini
Palma Vecchio: Portrait of a young woman known as “La Bella”, between 1518-20. This is thought to be a representation of Italian composer Francesca Caccini.
A beautiful counterpoint to this is the lament ‘Lasciatemi qui solo’ by Francesca Caccini (1587- ca 1775). It is set in the stile recitativo, a spoken style of singing developed in part by her father Giulio. The careful setting of the text and subtle embellishments make the tragic content poignantly palpable. The phrase ‘lasciatemi morire’ (let me die), which recurs at the end of each verse, sends shivers down my spine. This aria, sung with great sensitivity by the soprano María Hinojosa and accompanied modestly by the musicians, rivals Monteverdi’s much more famous ‘Lasciatemi morire’.
From here we jump straight to the High Baroque, with the ‘Air pour les Plaisirs’ from the opera Les Génies, ou les charactères de l’Amour by Mademoiselle Duval (c. 1718-c. 1775). This was performed no fewer than nine times at the Paris Opera, with Duval herself on the harpsichord. One critic called ‘some parts worthy of the harmonies of Rameau’s Les Indes galantes’. Duval indeed connects with the world of Rameau, with catchy melodies and exciting tempo changes, performed with verve by Urpina and her musicians.
In the short, somewhat sombre Conditor Alme by Gracia Baptista (c. 1557), Urpina plays the melancholic melody with a beautifully veiled violin sound, supported by warm strumming accompaniment on the theorbo. On the internet one finds quite a few recordings of this piece, so why did it end up in her selection? Urpina: ‘I searched extensively for Spanish women, but Gracia Baptista was simply the only one I found.’
Maddalena Casulana
The album also includes an arrangement Urpina made of ‘Morir non può’ by Maddalena Casulana (c. 1544–c. 1590) from her First Book of Madrigals. She published this collection in 1568 and dedicated it to Isabella de Medici, with the self-assured remark that she ‘wants to show the world how foolish men are when they consider themselves masters with high intellectual gifts that, in their opinion, are not equally present in women’. In her setting for strings, basso continuo and voice, Urpina first plays the main melody herself and only lets the soprano join in towards the end. The singer’s bold upward interval leap gives this love song an extra dramatic charge.
In ‘Air sérieux – Vole Amour, Dieu vainqueur’ by Mademoiselle Buttier (18th century), the soprano also makes large interval leaps in extremely fluid movements. A gem, just like the rousing ‘A False Designe to be Cruell’ by Lady Mary Dering (1629-1704). Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s (1665-1729) Sonata No. 1 in A minor, recorded here for the first time, once again demonstrates her unparalleled craftsmanship and musical ingenuity. She was rightly compared to her contemporary Lully.
Helena Cánovas (1994) composed the short Largo Once Again for violin, cello and harpsichord especially for Urpina, in which she plays with ingrained patterns of expectation. Fugato entries and Baroque ornamentation are abruptly interrupted by ‘false’ notes and harmonies. There are also modern playing techniques, such as tapping on the sound box and plucking a string with a plink and then pushing it upwards. Urpina herself sings a few short vocalises and is enthusiastic about the piece: ‘It is inspired by a sonata by Isabella Leonarda, like a dialogue between two composers from the past and present.’
Zulema de la Cruz
The second living composer is Zulema de la Cruz (1958), whose Canciones de Amor for soprano, violin and piano are appearing on CD for the first time here. Sounding straight after Conditor Alme one’s ears experience a brief clash, yet they quickly adapt to the modern idiom, with short repetitive motifs of musicians imitating each other in the first song. The second is more subdued, with dissonant harmonies and melodic arpeggios; the third returns to the atmosphere of the first. The graceful vocal lines interspersed with loud, declamatory flourishes suggest tragic content, but unfortunately José Hierro’s lyrics are not printed in the booklet. Urpina is a great admirer of De la Cruz’s music: ‘I always wanted to record one of her pieces, and I think this cycle fits in well with my concept.’
Newborn baby or not, the next album is already in the pipeline: ‘It will be a triple CD, but with a completely different theme – which I’m not going to reveal yet.’
https://youtu.be/5s8kMWXZNaQ
#MeToo #AnnaUrpina #FrancescaCaccini #JacquetDeLaGuerre #MaddalenaCasulana #ZulemaDeLaCruz
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