La Venexiana - Monteverdi: Concerto, Settimo Libro dei Madrigali, 1619 (2004)

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. He proclaimed this move with a unique title for the book, a relatively new word that would go on to a long and distinguished career -- he called it "Concerto." The root of the word in Latin meant to contend or to fight, and the interest of this Monteverdi set lies in how voices, styles, and ideas contend for dominance, even as a shell of allusions to the traditional idea of a madrigal is maintained. A few pieces are polyphonic works that heighten expression with pungent dissonances -- old-style madrigals, with continuo accompaniment. Others might as well be taken from works in the young genre of opera. Some are for two gloriously intertwined voices, with Monteverdi making the most of his chance to have voices collide, dispute, and sensuously settle together. The number of voices ranges from one to six.

Filling two complete CDs with Monteverdi's 29 sizable madrigals, this is a weighty chunk of early Baroque music. But the Italian ensemble La Venexiana, which made this recording in 1998, delivers state-of-the-art performances with a strong feel for the texts (included in a separate booklet and translated into four languages from the original Italian), and the recording never drags. There are sopranos who can rivet the listener more securely with their powers of ornamentation than can Rossana Bertini and Laura Fabris, but it doesn't matter -- La Venexiana succeeds in treating each piece in the set individually and differentiates among them beautifully. This ensemble has specialized in music from both sides of the year 1600, still too often taken as an impermeable music-historical watershed. They have been well attuned to what we now think of as early Baroque style that grew out of the great court musical spectaculars of the late sixteenth century, and here they seem to have an almost preternatural sense of the great master Monteverdi's excitement as he explored the new musical materials that were available to him. The handsome packaging from the Glossa label makes this an ideal gift item, and the liner notes by Stefano Russumano, although rather dense and in mighty small print, concisely transmit much of importance about this music and its epoch.