Pallas Nordica

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung | June 16, 2025

The violinist and ensemble director Maren Ries describes Christina of Sweden in the booklet accompanying the audiobook “Pallas Nordica,” which she conceived, essentially as a woman who did not wish to be a woman.
Ries calls her compilation of texts—drawn from the queen’s memoirs and letters and supplemented by observations from her contemporaries—”an audio-psychogram.” … One quickly notices how well and purposefully the documentary texts have been chosen, for they all portray a personality who refused to be pinned down, yet at the same time set high standards. … This audiobook is deepened by the music performed by the ensemble NeoBarock. The biographical testimonies are interwoven with chamber music and opera excerpts, all of which are connected to Christina’s life. Right at the beginning, Carly Power’s rendition of Luigi Rossi’s “Lamento della regina di Svezia” stylizes the horror of Christina’s mother, Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, at the death of Gustavus Adolphus II.
Among the selections are harmonically daring, melancholic, and pensive sonatas and laments by composers from the Swedish court, as well as excerpts from the opera “L’Argia” by Pietro Antonio Cesti, which was performed in Innsbruck in 1655 to celebrate Christina’s official conversion to Catholicism. … Alexandra Lowygina’s voice conveys both pride and self-contempt as she reads from Queen Christina of Sweden’s memoirs: “No greater misfortune can befall a country than to have a child for a king. But to Sweden’s misfortune, this child was also a woman.”
Article by Jan Brachmann