Per La Vergine Maria

"Concerto Italiano" just gets better and better! This, their most recent recording, is surely one of the most spectacular performances of 17th/18th Century vocal polyphony I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot! It's a program of ultra-passionate Marian vespers music -- Magnificats, Salve Reginas, Ave Marias -- for four, six, eight, and nine voices with continuo on theorbo and organ. It starts, as everything did, with Claudio Monteverdi, with his "Litanie della Beata Vergine a 6 voci", as published in 1650, after his death, with his masses and psalms composed for liturgical performance At St. Mark's in Venice. The wonder of Monteverdi is partly that every performance of his work sounds utterly new and plenipotent; in this case, I'd almost swear I've never heard such exhilarating sounds from a choir before, though I know I have several recordings of the same score.

Rinaldo Alessandrini, the conductor of "Concerto Italiano", is a superb harpsichordist, but for this program his particular genius has been musicological. He's selected -- resurrected and edited -- a program of rare masterpieces:

*Magnificat a 8 voci -- Pietro Paolo Bencini
*Salve Regina a 9 voci -- Alessandro Melani
*Magnificat a 8 voci -- Padre Antonio Soler
*Salve Regina at 4 voci -- Alessandro Scarlatti
*Magnificat a 8 voci -- Giacomo Carissimi

All these composers are the heirs of Monteverdi, and all the compositions worthy of sharing a program with the Master! And then for good measure, Alessandrini gives us:
Ave Maria a 4 voci -- Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)
and the modernism of Stravinsky is marvelously Monteverdian!

But it's the ensemble that makes this recording outstanding. For this session, "Concerto Italiano" brought together nine voices of highest virtuosity -- three sopranos, two contraltos,two tenors, and two basses, all Italian. The pieces are all sung one-on-a-part for course, with Alessandrini getting credit for melding such gorgeous soloistic voices into a sensitive choir. The only actual solo passages, in fact, belong to soprano Monica Piccinini in Melani's Salve Regina, and she sings them seraphically. Otherwise, this is a showcase of 'historically informed" ensemble technique: impeccable tuning throughout, lucid balance of voices, perfect matching of timbres, perfect unity of ornamentation styles, above all perfect coherence of affect.

Vocal polyphony doesn't get any better than this ... until, perhaps, Concerto Italiano's next release.

› Go to Amazon.com to see the review  5.0 out of 5 stars