Libro Verde

Philippe Herreweghe, respected elder of the early choral music world, directs a pared-down version of his choir Collegium Vocale Gent in delectably careful performances of music that in less careful hands can sound plain crazy. The slippery harmonies of Carlo Gesualdo’s sixth book of madrigals, written in 1611 but sounding centuries ahead of their time, are nailed down with the sharpest, slenderest of pins thanks to the perfect tuning and clear tone of Herreweghe’s ensemble. One to each line, the singers maintain a finely balanced blend, emerging briefly as soloists at moments of emphasis. Some may find the ambience a bit churchified for these texts, in which images of frolicking cupids are heavily outweighed by the laments of unbedded lovers miserably invoking death; but the performances are full of subtle nuance, and you’re unlikely to hear passages such as the end of Io Pur Respiro, with its sliding, viscous harmonies, better done.

To sense the emotional charge coursing through Carlo Gesualdo at the time when he was composing his Sixth Book of Madrigals, there is no better starting point than a thrilling new recording being issued on Glossa from La Compagnia del Madrigale. Some of the finest singers in the madrigal repertoire today – including Giuseppe Maletto, Daniele Carnovich and Rossana Bertini, and they have been refining their a cappella artistry over more than twenty years with groups such as La Venexiana and Concerto Italiano – now restore humanness, warmth, pictorial beauty and richness to one of the most complex cycles in all music. This marks the group’s triumphant entry onto a label which has always made the exploration of the Italian madrigal repertory one of its cornerstones.