Monteverdi: Ardo, avvampo

This set gathers 2 albums released in 1990 and 1994.

Each of them definitely established Montserrat Figueras as one of the best performers of Claudio Monteverdi’s vocal music. At this time, she developed an innovative style of interpretation, characterised by great fidelity to historical sources, combined with an extraordinary creative and expressive power, that has exerted a decisive influence on the whole historical music movement.

Vocal music before 1800 required a new technical and stylistic approach capable of restoring to the beauty and emotion of the voice, that most human of all forms of expression, the necessary balance between singing and declamation, with an emphasis on the poetic and spiritual dimension of the text.

She is accompanied by Jordi Savall on CD1 and Ton Koopman on CD2.

This second volume allows the listener to trace Monteverdi’s evolution from the early Mantuan a cappella madrigals that made his reputation to the late concerted madrigals of the 1630s written for the Viennese court.

These styles seem worlds apart, yet both are forged by the same desire, to confront and master the tension between mere art and real life.