Founded only recently, La Compagnia del Madrigale can already be considered as the pre-eminent madrigal ensemble on today’s international early music scene. The choice of the group’s name was inspired by the long-standing friendship and shared experiences of its singers from across two decades of performing together throughout the world. The founding members of the ensemble, Rossana Bertini, Giuseppe Maletto and Daniele Carnovich, while cultivating prestigious individual careers, have worked side by side for over 20 years, and their collective understanding as madrigalists has played a fundamental role in bringing an undisputed high level of artistry to groups such as Concerto Italiano and La Venexiana.
With Vieni, dolce Imeneo, La Compagnia del Madrigale make another important halt on their compelling journey across the territory of Italian secular song with a disc devoted to one of the most significant, yet these days somewhat bypassed, composers: Cipriano de Rore. De Rore was a Fleming who enjoyed great success notably in the Italian courts of Ferrara and Parma – but with a prestige which extended up and across Europe. [read more...]
On its onward journey across the major secular and sacred landmarks of Italian Renaissance polyphony, La Compagnia del Madrigale has now turned its attention to Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine and this new recording on Glossa presents this award-winning chamber ensemble in its prime and in the company of Cantica Symphonia and La Pifarescha, all under the direction of Giuseppe Maletto: a veritable cornucopia of present-day early music performers! [read more...]
With Il pianto della Madonna, a collection of spiritual compositions by Claudio Monteverdi, La Compagnia del Madrigale provide a stunning follow-up to their award-winning recording of the Fifth Book of madrigals by Luca Marenzio – both releases from Glossa. The singers of the ensemble have returned to their favoured Piedmontese recording location in Roletto to create a vivid sound picture of the desire in Monteverdi’s own time to bring the “heavenly harmony” of the composer’s secular works into the service of the religious domain (and that despite Post-Tridentine restrictions on such secular “intrusions”). [read more...]
The reviewing panel of the British magazine Gramophone has chosen this year to honour the second recording made for Glossa by La Compagnia del Madrigale: Luca Marenzio’s Primo Libro di Madrigali, 1580. At a ceremony held in the Baroque church of St John’s Smith Square in London on September 17, one of the Italian vocal ensemble’s founder members, soprano Rossana Bertini, stepped up to collect the Early Music prize at the 2014 Gramophone Classical Music Awards.[read more...]
The collective artistic endeavours of Glossa have recently been recognized with an award of Label of the Year for 2014 by a Europe-wide panel of classical music media organizations – print and online magazines, as well as radio broadcasters – who form the International Classical Music Awards (ICMA) jury. This is to be presented at the Award Ceremony and Gala Concert in the Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw in April 2014. The Glossa adventure began back in 1992, led by two pioneering Spanish instrumentalists – brothers José Miguel Moreno and Emilio Moreno – who set about creating a treasure trove of recorded excellence, notably in the ever-developing field of “early music”. To this day, the label remains focused on its artists, supporting their musical journeys and inclinations, with the artistic direction entrusted to Carlos Céster. With a small team around him Céster operates from San Lorenzo de El Escorial, surrounded by the abundant natural riches of the mountains around Madrid and with an austere Monasterio in sight to ever encourage him in the rigour of his work. [read more...]
Published in 1611 one year after Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, Gesualdo’s Sesto Libro di Madrigali offers a strikingly different reflection of Italian music as the Renaissance era evolved into the Baroque. The emotional charge and intensity of the texts for Gesualdo’s madrigals, allied to a complex music involving chromaticisms and dissonances, helped create a collection that has intrigued, delighted and puzzled its listeners from the point of its publication on to our own days. To offer a faithful interpretation of these five-part madrigals from the Sesto Libro in modern times requires musicians of great skill and experience, voices of beauty and clarity, and a sense of musical direction between the singers which is united and consistent. La Compagnia del Madrigale fulfils all these conditions (and expectations) on their new Glossa recording. To understand more about what drives La Compagnia del Madrigale, Daniele Carnovich and Giuseppe Maletto were asked to share their views on approaching the Sesto Libro di Madrigali by Carlo Gesualdo, the Prince of Venosa. [read more...]