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!

The thorough-going approach taken to this collection reflects the long experience that these Italian musicians have had with such music and covers all areas of the performance: the polarity between psalms and sacri concentus, the pictorial madrigalisms in the text, whether to add plainchant or not, how to interpret the tactus signs, which instruments to use for the bassus generalis, and crucially, the choices relating to tempi and pitch. The answers to such questions can be gained from listening to this major new recording, but Giuseppe Maletto does – in the dialogue which he has with Marco Bizzarini, La Compagnia del Madrigale’s regular booklet essay writer – invite the listener, in this fast-moving world, to respect the spirit of the composer and recover the calm of another age.

What emerges is a refreshing, but natural, response to one of the choral masterworks in the catalogue, a piece which reflects a sophisticated musical logic: a summa, avers Maletto, of deeply-absorbed Renaissance experiences projected more towards some far-off future than identifiable with the dawning Baroque.