Il Cor Tristo

The Hilliard Ensemble, formed in the early 1970s, had announced its retirement when this album appeared, but one is hard pressed to detect any diminution in the originality of its programming or in its trademark vocal blend, structured as as to allow each singer to emerge as an individual. Three composers are represented on this album of madrigals: Bernardo Pisano, Jacques Arcadelt, and the contemporary British composer Roger Marsh. Pisano has not been much heard since the rediscovery of the Renaissance Italian madrigal repertory in the 1960s and 1970s, and the simple, melancholy pieces here, focused on the "sad heart" of the title, are worth a new look.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Così fan tutte, opera lirica in due atti KV 588
Soile Isokoski - La Petite Bande / Sigiswald Kuijken
3xCD | EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 749 MB | Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Accent # ACC 9296-98 D | Country/Year: Belgium 1992
Genre: Classical | Style: Viennese School, Opera

"…More importantly, it just feels right, and that’s important for this piece where mood and atmosphere can have such an impact on the reading. I might even suggest that, next to the frenzied Jacobs and the rather serious Gardiner, this could come close to being a prime choice for a period version. " –MusicWeb International

It is more than twenty years since Solti last recorded Così for Decca, and if that earlier version was far from ideally cast, this new one more than makes amends. Above all, it has a commanding Fiordiligi in Renée Fleming, who conveys all the tragic vulnerability of this central character. Her performance of the great second-act rondo ‘Per pietà’ would be enough to melt the hardest of hearts. Anne Sofie von Otter and Olaf Bär are in fine form, too; and while Adelina Scarabelli is not exactly a mistress of disguises (she scarcely alters her voice at all for Despina’s part as the mesmeric doctor), her vitality is irresistible.

Cosi fan tutte"Of the numerous recordings of Cosi fan tutte in the catalogue, many of them excellent, I don't think there is any that has moved me as intensely at the work's ultimate climax, the Act 2 finale, as this new one of John Eliot Gardiner's. Nowadays we recognize, of course, that Cosi is not the frivolous frolic at the expense of womankind that it was long supposed to be, but something much more serious and (in my view at least) deeply sympathetic to women. Gardiner takes much of the finale at a rather steady pace, allowing plenty of time in the canon-toast for a gorgeous sensuous interplay of these lovely young voices, then carefully pacing the E major music that follows, pointing up the alarmed G minor music after the march is heard and sustaining the tension artfully at a high level during the denouement scene: so that, when their vow of undying love and loyalty, 'Idol mio, se questo e vero', is finally reached, it carries great pathos and emotional weight, and the sense too that all are chastened by the experience is evident in the ensemble that ensues.

There are many things to enjoy about this period-instrument Cosi: the convincing sense of style that runs through it, the sweetness of the orchestral sound, the due observance of the appoggiaturas (which matches the music so happily to the natural stress of the words), the general fluency and sense of theatrical presentation. Some listeners may find, as I do, certain of the tempos excessively rapid. This new CD ver sion provides a warm, well-defined sound, in general a marginal improvement on the LPs, of course without the slightest surface interference and with just a touch more of clarity and fullness, especially in the ensembles, where the different threads are even more easily distinguished. And the trumpets and drums, on whose prominence I remarked in discussing the LPs, come through still more markedly here. As before, the woodwind balance is exemplary. Firmly recommended to any open-minded lover of Mozart. S.S.