Claudio MONTEVERDI (1567-1643) and his Contemporaries
Madrigals
MONTEVERDI
Sestina: Lagrimae d'Amante a1 sepo1ero dell'amata
1. Incenerite*
2. Ditelo o fiumi*
3. Dara la notte*
4. Ma te raccoglie*
5 O Chiome d'or*
6. Dunque amate reliquie*
7. Claudio Monteverdi: Zefiro torna 4.34
8. Claudio Monteverdi: Era l'anima mia
4.14
9. Claudio Monteverdi: Ohime, se tanto amate
3.29
10. Carlo Gesulado: Dolcissima ma vita 4.05
.
11. John Wilbye: Weep weep, mine
eyes*
12. John Wilbye: Oft have I vowed*
13. Orlando Gibbons:
What is our life?*
14. Thomas Morley: 0 Grief, even on the bud*
15. John Wilbye: Draw on sweet
night*
Monteverdi Choir/Gardiner
* Recorded Bryanston School, Blandford Forum 1967
Executive Producer Harry Mudd MBE
Tracks 7-10 Licensed from Decca International
Regis RRC 1035 [58
mins]
around £6 from dealers
John Eliot Gardiner's first recording from 1967, re-released on CD, is a
historic/ical document of considerable importance. At 21, whilst studying
Arabic & History at Cambridge, he formed this group, initially to perform
Monteverdi's Vespers 1610, and after graduating he turned to a musical
career, studying with Nadia Boulanger and Thurston Dart. The rest is history,
as they say, and Gardiner is now at the centre of the musical and recording
world, with 'period' recreations of music from those early centuries right
up to the 19th, and branching out into French opera at Lyon (a visually
controversial but musically distinguished
Pelleas et Melisande on DVD) and a somewhat
fraught Bach Pilgrimage during 2000.
This recording was made at Bryanston School in Gardiner's native Dorset.
It concentrates on short Montverdi madrigals, with one by Gesualdo, and finishes
with English madrigals by Wilbye, Gibbons and Morley. A pleasing programme,
satisfactorily transferred to CD, which merits a place in a comprehensive
record collection.
Peter Grahame Woolf
