Category: Recording

Voces Suaves
62:36
Ambronay AMY308
Agostini, Gesualdo, Luzzaschi, Monteverdi, de Wert

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his comprehensive tour of the Italian madrigal world includes the composers listed in the title as well as several more, including a Gonzaga Duke! The group are well named as they have a delightfully suave tone and blend which are very easy on the ear, and provide delicate accounts of the madrigals. Just occasionally I felt that we lost some of the detail in the more rapidly interactive episodes, but these are performances which are never less that sensitive and expressive, and in their presentation of both familiar and unfamiliar material they provide a very broad introduction to the development of this distinctive and important musical form. In the highly decorated lines of a Luzzaschi madrigal the detail of the articulation is definitely sacrificed for the overall sense of line, but the ensemble has an uncanny ability to spectacularly ‘warm up’ the tone for appropriate passages while the sound of the full eight-voice texture, as in Gastoldi’s Cantiam lieti, is magnificent.

D. James Ross

Doulce Mémoire, Denis Raisin Dadre
67:20
Ricercar RIC371

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n my apprenticeship as a recorder player, I invested in a copy of Ganassi’s manual on ornamentation, Fontegara, and still remember my astonishment at the diversity and freedom of decorations he suggested including trills on a third and fourth, scalic divisions of startling variety and sheer flights of fancy. I felt then and feel now that early musicians have chosen very selectively from this and other manuals to create an ornamentation orthodoxy, which simply didn’t exist in the 16th century. Fascinating then to have this CD presenting vocal accounts by Clara Coutouly of madrigals by Verdelot followed by diminutions after Ganassi, played on the recorder by Denis Raisin Dadre. Sympathetically accompanied by lute, harp and spinet/clavicytherium Coutouly gives markedly straight-laced but beautiful accounts of Verdelot’s imaginative music, contrasting effectively with Dadre’s technical fireworks. In a couple of the madrigals both soloists perform simultaneously, Coutouly singing ‘straight’ and Dadre ornamenting the same line, an approach which sounds as if it may result in chaos but which works surprisingly well. I was disappointed to hear no exotic trills at any point, suggesting a slightly conservative approach even today by the present performers – I can remember as a student raising a few eyebrows at concerts with unorthodox recorder trills ‘alla Ganassi’, and I made sure to have a page reference at hand for any critics. Notwithstanding this, the present performances are highly engaging and sound very natural and believable.

D. James Ross

Ensemble le Vaghe Ninfe, Natalie Bonello, Maria Antonietta Cancellaro
64:06
Brilliant Classics 95416

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his CD is the result of a very thorough concert engagement with the music of Mazzone, and the performers provide impassioned accounts of the four-part Canzoni in a variety of vocal and instrumental guises. These range from four unaccompanied voices, which employ a little more vibrato than would be ideal, and voices with a variety of instruments including a (perhaps slightly anachronistic?) serpent, to entirely instrumental performances featuring renaissance flutes and organ. These latter interpretations are helpfully preceded by spoken accounts of the missing texts, and tastefully embellished. Marc’ Antonio Mazzone’s name was known to me, but this account of his four-voice Canzoni gives a clear picture of where he stands in the world of late-Renaissance Italian music. There are a couple of issues with the recording, such as the rather artificial-sounding overall acoustic and the rather startling, amplified sound of the reader’s voice. I have reviewed so many studio recorded accounts of concert performances involving readers where this same balance problem arises that I can only conclude that readers need to be present and be recorded in the same acoustic and in the same way as the music.

D. James Ross