Pier Luca Pierini

Thanks to recordings such as this one, the figure of Johann Wilhelm Wilms (1772-1847) is increasingly coming into focus and prominence as a notable contemporary of Beethoven who deserves better than his previous obscurity. In 1807, the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung described the Wilms as ‘one of the most ingenious, spirited, and best educated artists’ of his generation: a judgment borne out by the this trio of high-spirited chamber works.

Frederick II of Prussia, better known as “the Great”, lived at a time when the decline of the absolutist powers of “Kings” came into conflict with the advent of “Reason, the Enlightenment”. Frederick reformed the military and government, established religious tolerance and granted a basic form of freedom of the press. He bolstered the legal system and established the first German code of law. Of all things, Frederick the Great, as he became to be known, left a legacy of devotion to Germany, which also was evident in his love for the arts.

If you want a good idea of why Luca Marenzio (1553-99) was considered madrigalist during the late-16th century, the music and performances on this fine recording will provide a good starting place. The richly colorful vocal writing–and equally colorful texts!–are ideally illustrated by the tightly focused intonation, reedy timbre, and knowing inflections of the Concerto Italiano’s seven singers. Sampling from Marenzio’s five- and six-part madrigals, the ensemble avoids any temptation to over-state the music’s case with exaggerated accents or heavy-handed phrasing and dynamics (a common fault of less-competent groups). Instead, they trust the composer’s keen sense of text-setting and allow expressive effects to arise naturally from the score.

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.

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bachs interest in the organ would seem to be fairly limited, at least judging by the number of pieces he composed for the instrument. The reasons for this attitude could be personal and professional, but could also reflect the changing affections and the new sensibility of the period, since during his lifetime the organ underwent a phase of relative decline. Indeed, following the acme reached by Johann Sebastian Bach, the instrument sank into a phase of neglect in Germany during the second half of the 1700s.

Luca Marenzio was the most brilliant representative of the sublime art of the madrigal during the last twenty years of the sixteenth century. Whereas the style of his early works is light, fluid and transparent, in his maturity Marenzio’s language turned towards a more complex, introspective attitude that made him the most emblematic musical exponent of Late Renaissance melancholy. L’amoroso & crudo stile brings together some of Marenzio’s finest madrigals, aiming to reproduce the most intimate expressive facets of a music of extraordinary beauty and profound humanity. With the emotional intensity and deep respect for the poetic text that distinguishes the ensemble, RossoPorpora begins in this debut recording its personal exploration and celebration of the madrigal, the earliest and still unsurpassed representation of Italian musical identity.