Marenzio Claudio Cavina

"For the non-specialist," observed Early Music World, "detailed consideration of Marenzio's large body of madrigals remains a vain quest in the light of the lack of comprehensive accessibility to either printed or recorded music." This release from Spain's Glossa label helps rectify the situation with precise yet stylistically sensitive performances of a key set of Luca Marenzio madrigals from the vocal group La Venexiana.

Over the years Glossa has been at the forefront of releasing recordings of late Renaissance madrigals, and the label has had the pleasure of assisting superlative artists in doing so: none more so than the voices of La Venexiana and its director Claudio Cavina. This release is a reflection of such creative richness. The recordings on this release date from the dozen years after La Venexianas foundation in 1996, a time of great activity for the ensemble, and which complements the Monteverdi Complete Madrigals Books set, released previously. These two impressive collections demonstrate effectively why La Venexiana has been so popular with audiences and why it has been praised by critics as well.

Italian Renaissance composer Luca Marenzio was internationally recognized as the leading composer of madrigals at the height of his career, in the last two decades of the sixteenth century. He was so popular (and the sales of his music so lucrative) that within years of his death, both Flemish and German publishers had issued volumes of his complete five and six part madrigals, an honor almost unheard of at the time. Marenzio's madrigals, while anticipating the songlike lyricism of monody that would come to dominate vocal music of the early Baroque, made full use of the textural and expressive qualities of Renaissance polyphony.