La Compagnia del Madrigale CIPRIANO DE RORE Vieni, dolce Imeneo

With Vieni, dolce Imeneo, La Compagnia del Madrigale make another important halt on their compelling journey across the territory of Italian secular song with a disc devoted to one of the most significant, yet these days somewhat bypassed, composers: Cipriano de Rore. De Rore was a Fleming who enjoyed great success notably in the Italian courts of Ferrara and Parma – but with a prestige which extended up and across Europe. He composed in many genres, but it is the secular madrigal – recorded here – where his skill was most valued, for example in creating extended and expressive melodic lines coupled with innovatory pre-echoes of the seconda pratica so triumphantly expressed – albeit amidst great criticism – by Claudio Monteverdi.

Recordings – all also on Glossa – of madrigals by Marenzio, Gesualdo and Monteverdi have already demonstrated musical pleasures such as an uncommon vocal blend and delicacy, and a meticulous dynamic control exhibited by the richly experienced members of La Compagnia del Madrigale, and those delights are to be experienced with these 19 madrigals by Cipriano de Rore, composed late in his career.

With texts by Petrarch, Ariosto and assorted court poets for these madrigals, essay-writer Marco Bizzarini highlights one of the principal characteristic features of de Rore’s mastery when he points to the disc’s title track, Vieni, dolce Imeneo: the ideal union between poetry and music.

Stile Galante / Stefano Aresi PORPORA L'Amato Nome

Nicola Porpora’s Op 1 set of Italian chamber cantatas receive a new and striking reading directed by Stefano Aresi, a leading interpreter of the Late Baroque composer. Neapolitan-born Porpora brought his nuove musiche with him in the early 1730s when he had set out for London (with his pupil Farinelli) to take advantage of the perceived wavering of Handel’s operatic fame there. Porpora, espying an opportunity there just as Handel himself had done before, quickly ingratiated himself with the nobility in Britain and his 12 cantatas, though probably written in Naples, were published under the patronage of Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales of Great Britain. They enjoyed substantial success at the time, and reflecting the primacy of Italian music across Europe, not least through Porpora’s masterly settings of Pietro Metastasio’s texts extolling Arcadian tastes and ideals.

These dozen works are shared between four singers from Stile Galante – Francesca Cassinari and Emanuela Galli, sopranos, Giuseppina Bridelli and Marina De Liso, contraltos – who have developed their interpretations, including the use of contemporaneous embellishments (such as strascino and cercar della nota), with Stefano Aresi. In addition to directing the project, Aresi contributes a stimulating booklet essay for this new Glossa L’amato nome release which will do much for the cause of modern-day historical reinterpretation of Porpora’s chamber vocal music. (Glossa)

La Venexiana CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI Primo Libro dei Madrigali & Nono Libro dei Madrigali

In bringing together the First and Ninth Books of Madrigals by Claudio Monteverdi it is tempting to ask the question whether some common denominator exists which is capable of encircling the entire range of ideas expressed by this journey, the duration of which lasted for over half a century. Monteverdi himself offered a clue to this question in a letter dated December 1616, where he wrote: “How will I be able to imitate the conversing of the winds if they speak not? And across them, will I be able to stir the emotions?” It is precisely his passion for the written word which guided the composer all through his career. Themes such as the world, feelings, the entirety of life, are revealed in a constant stream of words that are sung, cried, whispered, hushed and dreamt. Their rhythm, sonority and colour represent, for Monteverdi, direct proof of the mobility of the emotions, the primary material on which the composer needs to work.

Published in 1587 in Venice by Angelo Gardano, the Madrigali a cinque voci… Libro primo acts as the departure point of an exploration which was to change the face of the genre over the following decades, voyaging towards new horizons in which not only music but the actual vision of the world itself was to become irrevocably altered.

The Monteverdian voyage with the madrigal concludes with a posthumous (albeit detachable) chapter. Published by Alessandro Vincenti in 1651, the Libro Nono was conceived without the involvement of the composer, who had died some eight years previously. The project was born from Vincenti’s desire to exploit the pull which the composer’s name was still exerting... (GLOSSA)

La Compagnia del Madrigale CLAUDIO MONTEVERDI Il pianto della Madonna

With Il pianto della Madonna, a collection of spiritual compositions by Claudio Monteverdi, La Compagnia del Madrigale provide a stunning follow-up to their award-winning recording of the Fifth Book of madrigals by Luca Marenzio – both releases from Glossa. The singers of the ensemble have returned to their favoured Piedmontese recording location in Roletto to create a vivid sound picture of the desire in Monteverdi’s own time to bring the “heavenly harmony” of the composer’s secular works into the service of the religious domain (and that despite Post-Tridentine restrictions on such secular “intrusions”).

Here, for example, is presented the spiritual version of the celebrated Lamento d’Arianna from the lost opera Arianna – Il pianto della Madonna – and sung in a distinctive polyphonic reworking prepared especially for La Compagnia del Madrigale. Pastoral concerns in Monteverdi’s madrigals, such as in the Fourth and Fifth Books, make way for reflections on the Crucifixion or the Nativity through the new religious texts supplied by the likes of Angelo Grillo and Aquilino Coppini, which nonetheless fit the music more than aptly. Included also are some of Monteverdi’s own religious compositions, as published by Giulio Cesare Bianchi, and including the extensive Litaniae lauretanae.

In the booklet essay Marco Bizzarini brings his deep understanding of the interplay of words and music in Italy in Monteverdi’s time, underscoring the skill, experience and sheer musicality of La Compagnia del Madrigale. (GLOSSA)

Il pianto della Madonna.pdf