Madrigali Libro

The members of the ensemble La Venexiana won in 1994 the Gramophone Award for Early Music under the name Concerto Italiano. They are some of the most experienced European performers in the early music field, and have been singing together for many years, establishing a new style in Italian early music performances: a warm, truly Mediterranean blend of textual declamation, textural color and harmonic refinement. This repertoire seems to be created as if to let them fully show their expressive powers. Barbara Strozzi's talent shines in this pieces, designed to show her excepcional dramatic powers and unique gifts for musical imaginery. Many of these madrigals have the appearance of a succession of operatic scenes in miniature, each with its particular dramatic atmosphere and with the participation of several soloists.

Claudio Monteverdi's Seventh Book of Madrigals, written in 1619, was really the first that was fully part of the new operatic age – and really the first to consist of pieces that were not really madrigals at all. For all of the soloistic and operatic expressive devices, for all the block chords that had appeared in the previous few books, this was the first set in which Monteverdi dispensed with the traditional five-voice texture of the madrigal.

With the release of Monteverdi's Fifth Book of Madrigals, La Venexiana, the extraordinary ensemble founded and led by countertenor Claudio Cavina, comes close to completing its cycle of Monteverdi's nine volumes for Glossa, with only the first and last books left to record. The Fifth Book, published just before Monteverdi wrote Orfeo, is a pivotal collection that incorporates conventions both of Renaissance madrigals and of the emerging Baroque. La Venexiana's performance is notable for its musical and emotional intensity.

Carlo Gesualdo is one of the most fascinating composers. It is hard to escape the temptation of seeing in his madrigals the tortured reflection of his psyche, beginning with the murder committed in 1590, when he caught his first wife Maria d’Avalos in blatant adultery with her lover Fabrizio Carafa. The madrigals of the Fifth and Sixth Books are to Gesualdo what the black paintings are to Goya: works conceived in a state of solitude, with no fetters on the artist’s imagination, born in enclosed spaces and used to moving around in their gloom. It is a music fitting to resonate in remote and unusual places.

Following the acclaim which met their 2-CD set devoted to the first two books of Gesualdo's madrigals (2020 Gramophone Award), Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants now focus on the composer's Ferrara period. Books III and IV mark a turning point in Gesualdo's output. The murderous prince's inner demons seem to be reflected in the heightened expressiveness of these madrigals, whose reliance on chromaticism and dissonance was so far ahead of it's time that it's like would not be heard again until centuries later.

Fully integrated with the musical line, the singers avoid melodrama through intimate, small gestures as if acting for screen, not stage.’ Gramophone Critics' Choice 2021 Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants conclude their exploration of this fascinating corpus. Even more than in his first books, Gesualdo here displays incredible modernity, playing in inimitable fashion on dissonances and chromaticisms. Love and death, joys and sorrows embrace and clash amid ever bolder harmonies.

Having thoroughly explored the madrigals of Monteverdi, Paul Agnew returns to the genre, this time focusing on the work of Gesualdo, whose mastery of chromaticism and dissonance eventually turned these expressive devices into a defining feature of his musical style. A fascinating repertoire that Paul Agnew and his team delight in offering here.