Glossa: Gesualdo — Terzo Libro di Madrigali — La Compagnia del Madrigale (Audio CD)

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Product Details:

• UPC: 8424562228061
• Catalog Number: GCD 922806
• Product Type: Audio CD
• Brand / Label: Glossa
• Performer: La Compagnia del Madrigale
• Composer: Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (1566–1613)
• Work: Third Book of Madrigals for five voices (1595)
• Release Year: 2016
• Genre: Classical
• Style: Renaissance, Madrigal, Vocal / A cappella

Product Features

• Format: CD
• Discs: 1
• Total runtime: 63:31
• Voices: Rossana Bertini & Francesca Cassinari (soprano), Elena Carzaniga (alto), Giuseppe Maletto & Raffaele Giordani (tenor), Daniele Carnovich (bass), with Laura Fabris (soprano) and Annalisa Mazzoni (alto)
• Recording: Chiesa della BV al Colletto, Roletto (Italy), 2015
• Made in: Austria
• Condition: Brand new, factory sealed

Overview

La Compagnia del Madrigale turns to Carlo Gesualdo's Third Book of Madrigals (1595), the point where one of music history's strangest and most arresting voices begins to come fully into focus. This is Renaissance vocal music sung with the precision and expressive depth that has made the Italian ensemble one of the most admired madrigal groups working today.

Gesualdo is famous for two things: extraordinary music and a notorious life. As a nobleman composer he answered to no patron's taste, and his madrigals push harmony into sudden, aching chromatic turns that would not sound out of place centuries later. The texts here are the language of love as suffering — titles like "Languisco e moro" ("I languish and die") and "Ahi, disperata vita" — and Gesualdo sets every shiver of feeling in the words.

The seventeen madrigals of the Third Book are followed by three bonus tracks by composers in Gesualdo's orbit: Scipione Stella, Luzzasco Luzzaschi, and Alfonso Fontanelli. Together they frame Gesualdo within the experimental madrigal culture of his time.

Recorded in a resonant Italian church and issued on Glossa with a scholarly booklet, this is reference-quality Gesualdo — clear, intense, and unflinching.

Interesting Facts

• Carlo Gesualdo (1566–1613) was a nobleman, the Prince of Venosa, and famously had his first wife and her lover killed after discovering their affair — a scandal that has shadowed his reputation ever since.
• His harmonic language is so chromatic and unpredictable that he is often described as centuries ahead of his time; Stravinsky was among his twentieth-century admirers.
• The Third Book of Madrigals was published in 1595, around the period of Gesualdo's second marriage and his move to the Este court at Ferrara.
• The bonus tracks feature Luzzasco Luzzaschi, the Ferrara court composer whose experimental madrigals strongly influenced Gesualdo.
• La Compagnia del Madrigale, founded in Italy, has won numerous international awards for its Renaissance vocal recordings.
• The album was recorded in a church in Roletto, Italy, chosen for the acoustic suited to unaccompanied voices.

Track Listing

1. Ancidetemi pur, grievi martiri — 3:40
2. Sospirava il mio core — 4:34
3. Del bel de' bei vostri occhi — 2:49
4. Ahi, dispietata e cruda — 3:32
5. Deh, se già fu crudele — 2:16
6. Ahi, disperata vita — 1:57
7. Dolcissimo sospiro — 3:08
8. Meraviglia d'Amore — 3:15
9. Voi volete ch'io mora — 3:47
10. Se vi miro pietosa — 2:30
11. Crudelissima doglia — 3:09
12. Dolce spirto d'amore — 2:45
13. Languisco e moro, ahi, cruda — 4:01
14. Se piange, ohimè, la donna — 3:23
15. Veggio, sì, dal mio sole — 2:42
16. Non t'amo, o voce ingrata — 2:52
17. Donna, se m'ancidete — 2:45 Bonus tracks:
18. Scipione Stella: Sento dentr'al cor mio — 2:39
19. Luzzasco Luzzaschi: Dolorosi martir — 4:22
20. Alfonso Fontanelli: Colei che già si bella — 3:13

Publishers

℗ & © 2016 note 1 music gmbh. Released on Glossa, San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain. Catalog GCD 922806. Made in Austria.

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