Are the heroines of the title the female narrators of these songs and arias, or are they the composers – women including Claudia Sesa, Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini and Lucrezia Vizzana – who surmounted impossible challenges to give voice to their music? They are, of course, both, and it’s a combination that makes for a charged programme.

A natural storyteller never afraid to paint period music in rich hues, soprano Ruby Hughes delights in the expressive details of Strozzi’s arioso-like L’Eraclito Amoroso and Lagrime mie. Both are closer to opera than chamber music, the latter opening in a prescient clatter of chromatics. If Hughes takes risks, they only match those of the music. Sesa and Vizzana represent the women confined to convents, for whom music was a rare emotional and expressive outlet. Sesa’s Occhi io vissi di voi has all the erotic spirituality of Teresa of Avila’s writings – a love-song clothed in vestments, and while Vizzana’s O Magnum Mysterium is more restrained, the contrast of the chromatic wounds of the verse to the consonant balm of the Alleluia is a poignant as it is sophisticated.

Leavening the vocal music with a thoughtful selection of instrumental works, Jonas Nordberg and Mime Yamahiro-Brinkmann make this a recital to listen to from beginning to end – a disc that pulls contemporary emotions out from under historical conventions.