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Recorded in 2004

Reissue in the Brilliant Classics Opera Collection of this excellent “HIP” performance of Monteverdi’s ever popular L’Orfeo, history’s first real opera. Soloists include the crème of Baroque Voices: the great Sara Mingardo, Sylvia Pozzer, Gabriella Martellacci, Gianpaolo Fagotto and the inspiring and historically based direction of Sergio Vartolo.

All libretti are available on www.brilliantoperacollection.com.

Narrating the famous tale of the Thracian singer Orpheus and his quest to the underworld to bring his wife, Euridice, back to the land of the living, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo is one of the most enduringly popular of all operatic works.

Numerous performances continue to be staged to this day, and there are no signs of fading appreciation for the work, even four centuries after its first performance (in 1607). Sergio Vartolo’s fantastic, historically-informed interpretation presents an ideal opportunity for listeners to explore the reasons behind this opera’s vast and undiminishing popularity.

Monteverdi’s famed skill for giving full expression to a text’s meaning is particularly clear – shown, for example, in his careful deployment of dissonance for emotional impact, and in the immensely moving third-act aria. Beyond this, however, L’Orfeo’s ability to enthral audiences may lie in its celebration of the power and beauty of music; from the opening Prologue, where Music appears onstage to extol her virtues, to Orpheus’s ability to achieve the unthinkable and gain access to the underworld through his talent as a singer, music is the driving force of the opera’s action. This fantastic recording reveals the genius of Monteverdi’s work fully, featuring an exemplary and authentic interpretation that is the result of Sergio Vartolo’s thorough study of the score. Essential listening for any serious fans of opera, this set is also an excellent starting-point for exploring the music of Monteverdi, who has been dubbed the ‘creator of modern music’.

In the 16th century madrigals were all the rage, and the country where the genre was perfected was Italy. The motet had reached Italy from the Netherlands and France during the previous 200 years, and had been infused with the ‘new’ polyphonic style of composition. Italy was also the country that had produced the greatest poetry of the Renaissance, including Petrach and Tasso.

The fusion of music and this wonderful poetry inspired many of the great Italian composersof the period such as Caccini, and most importantly Monteverdi.

The madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi represent the final development of the form and are without doubt the greatest examples. He composed eight books between 1585 and 1635. They are composed for a small vocal ensemble of five voices, with harpsichord and theorbo (a large lute) continuo.

Monteverdi’s genius as a composer of opera can be heard in the drama he creates in these madrigals. They can be described with some justification as mini operas.

Le Nuova Musiche was formed in 2004 and specialises in music from the first half of the 17th century. The members of the group are not only first class musicians, but have the benefit of in depth knowledge of the performing practices and manuscripts of the repertoire.

Monteverdi, like many composers of the early Baroque, produced a sizeable body of madrigals. This was partly due to the insatiable public demand for what was high quality domestic music. Small instrumental forces, talented singers, and music set to words by some of the most popular poets of the day. Needless to say, Monteverdi’s madrigals are among the very finest examples, and he was among the last composers that brought the form to its pinnacle. The later baroque had no place for the form.

It was probably during his time at the court of Mantua in the 1580s that he became acquainted with the works of Torquato Tasso (1544-95). He had been working with fellow composer Giaches de Wert, an enthusiastic madrigal producer of some fame, and no doubt guided by de Wert, took to producing his own. The first set was published in 1587, the second in 1590, a third in 1592, and the fourth and final set in 1603. The madrigal was a short work lasting no more than five minutes for a small group of voices, each singing a solo part. The subject matter was nearly always of worldly matters, a speciality of Tasso. The influence of church music can be detected in the earlier books, but in the later works more freedom of expression, often highly dramatic can be heard. In essence, they become miniature operatic scenes. All of Monterverdi’s Tasso settings were written prior to 1600, and all of his operas come after that year. However, in these works we can clearly detect the emergence of the first great operatic composer. Rinaldo Alessandrini and Concerto Italiano have been critically acclaimed for their recordings of Monteverdi’s Madrigal. They have recorded all eight books for various labels throughout the 1990s Authoritative performance practice and an all Italian cast give idiomatic performances of these early Monterverdi madrigal settings.

Booklet note and texts.

A much needed filling of a gap in the Brilliant Classics discography: the world famous Maria Vespers of Monteverdi! The Maria Vespers contain a collection of liturgical chants and psalms, for a wide variety of instruments, from the festive opening with trumpets to intimate arias for solo voice.

In everything one hears the great dramatic genius of Monteverdi, the “first” opera composer in history. Excellent performance, on historical instruments, by conductor Diego Fasolis, and his “Barocchisti”, and a great line of vocal soloists, among whom are the well known Marco Beasley and Marinella Pennicchi.

Dedicated to Pope Paul V, Monterverdi’s Vespers of 1610 is one of the great masterpieces of the early Baroque. The score features an amazing variety of styles – grand choral and instrumental, solo motets, two settings of the Magnificat, duets and trios in the latest monodic style, and above all, a sense of theatre, which might be explained by Monteverdi’s composition of two operas at around the same time, L’Orfeo and L’Arianna.

At this point of his life, Monteverdi was still working for the Gonzaga family and the Duke of Mantua, a far from happy situation for the composer. Underpaid, undervalued and overworked, he was looking beyond Mantua when he dedicated the 1610 Vespers to Pope Paul V in an aim to secure future employment in the church.

Fittingly, large forces are called for, and the vocal parts are so challenging, even to this day, that it is no surprise that the work was never reprinted.

Rather than a piece for everyday religious use, the work was intended as a calling card, a job application on the grandest scale. Nowadays, the work receives regular performances, although the first modern performance wasn’t given until 1935. Monteverdi’s bid for a position in Rome didn’t succeed, but he did move to Venice to become maestro di capella at St Mark’s Basilica; here, the full potential of this grand yet deeply personal work could be realised to the full.

Claudio Monteverdi and Girolamo Frescobaldi were two of the most influential musical figures in 17th-century Italy; while the former's boundary-pushing madrigals, operas and sacred works changed the course of Baroque vocal music irrevocably, the latter was one of the first – and most prominent – composers to devote serious attention to composing for the keyboard.

This new recording celebrates the influence that these two composers continue to exert over performers and audiences today -- and the fascination that their music inspires -- through a selection of motets and instrumental pieces, performed with precision and authority by Il Pegaso and Maurizio Croci. Of particular interest are a handful of new discoveries: three Marian antiphons by Monteverdi, preserved in a music print held at the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka in Wroclaw, Poland, and pieces drawn from a recently-unearthed notebook of Frescobaldi's, including early stages of extant works.

With the addition of several better known compositions, this intriguing collection illuminates some less familiar aspects of both composers' oeuvres, and places recent musicological discoveries within reach of listeners. In their debut recording, the new ensemble Il Pegaso, led by Maurizio Croci, deliver performances invested with passion and expertise.

Other information:

- A rare and exciting opportunity to hear recently-discovered pieces by Monteverdi and Frescobaldi, performed by experts in 17th-century Italian music.

- The debut recording by new ensemble Il Pegaso.

- Recorded in February 2012.

Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort and Players have become famous for their recreations of the great liturgical set pieces of the Venetian 16th and early 17th centuries. These recordings made by Deutsche Grammophon in the 1990s are state of the art and were critically acclaimed. In this 5Cd set we are taken back to St Mark’s Basilica, the most important church in the city-state, and the Confraternity of San Rocco, for which Giovanni Gabrieli and his colleague the falsetto Bartolemeo Barbarino composed remarkable collection of instrumental and vocal music. This recording includes wide range of Gabrieli’s work, from intimate motets, to the reconstructed glory of the 33 part Magnificat On CDs 1 and 2 we are in St Mark’s at Easter time in 1600. The smell of incense hangs in the chill air of the basilica and the huge building resonates with sound of voices – the service has begun. The central work is the Missa Congratulamini mihi by Lassus. As was customary, the Credo has been omitted, and substituted with non-liturgical vocal works by composers such as Giovanni and Alessandro Gabrieli, Bendinelli, and Merulo. Organ toccatas, Sacrae symphonea and other vocal works are placed between the movements of the Mass. The Venetian Vespers on CDs 3 and 4 again draws on music from a variety of composers as services such as the vespers at this time were often made up of movements of Mass and Vespers settings by different composers. The composer of the most famous setting of the Vespers, Claudio Monteverdi features here with his Messa et salmi, alongside Banchieri, Cavalli, and Giovanni Gabrieli.

Gramophone reviewing Music for San Rocco said ‘It is hard to imagine this fine recording of Gabrieli’s music being superseded for some time to come. For the sheer splendour of the music, and the excellence of the performances, this recording is a must, a real five-star achievement’. January 1997

Venetian Vespers Gramophone review ‘Among the performers there is a feeling of common enterprise that is hard to describe, but which sets this record apart from so many others where the overall impression is of a sequence of unrelated pieces given a disjointed series of separate performances…. There is some carefully thought out and gracefully shaped instrumental playing…. In short this is an heroic achievement of the highest possible order’. June 1993

Venetian Easter Mass, Gramophone review. ‘The impact is tremendous in some items…as usual, the singing and playing are of a high order..’ July 1997