Outil de traduction (Très approximatif)
Translator tool (Very approximate)
Reviewer:
Fabrice Fitch
As anniversaries
go, 450 isn’t much of a round number, but since it will be another
quarter-century until the next Monteverdi year, we’ll settle for it. Concerto
Italiano are marking this one with extensive touring and this new CD, consisting
primarily of madrigals they’ve recorded before, albeit before the ‘great schism’
that led to a substantial overhaul of their line-up around the turn of the
millennium. The programme’s theme is night, its terrors and delights, and the
conjunction of love and war at the heart of the eighth book. We have
Alessandrini’s long experience to thank for a programme of guile and
sophistication. With instrumental sinfonias serving as intermedios, a
striking Combattimento is framed by ‘Hor che’l ciel e la terra’ and
Tancredo’s ‘Lamento’ from Book 3, which picks up the thread after Clorinda’s
last breath but was composed more than 30 years earlier. The Lamento della
ninfa is a logical continuation, while ‘Al lume delle stelle’ sees a male
protagonist bemoan an enforced separation, both genders doing so in a gorgeous
‘A Dio, florida bella’. The alternation of monodic and polyphonic pieces, of
a cappella and mixed scorings, is pleasingly varied. A dark palette pervades
all, not gloomy but suggestive of the altered, heightened senses that night
brings forth: even the genial ‘Ecco mormorar l’onde’ has more shade than light.
The tone of Alessandrini’s male
soloists (most prominently in the Combattimento) is perhaps not
classically beautiful but they have guts and a hint of menace. Anna Sinboli’s
Clorinda captures the character’s vulnerability, though Elisa Franzetti just
possibly bests her as she breathes her last. Most intriguingly, Alessandrini’s
reading of the work 20 years on is strikingly different: less dramatic, more
analytical, in keeping with the programme – added to which the instruments and
the recorded sound are far brighter. Some may find this analytical approach at
odds with the popular view of Monteverdi but this misses the fact that it took a
formidable musical intellect to harness music to the service of flesh and blood.
This recording is in a direct line with Alessandrini’s superb account of Book 6
for Naïve, and is in many ways just as impressive. It’s also a reminder that he
has yet to record three of Monteverdi’s madrigal books (not least the
magnificent seventh). Might this anniversary year see him complete the cycle?
