Concerto Italiano is
one of those energetic and expert ensembles
which seemed to emerge from nowhere
in the mid-1980s, effortlessly to do
everything right and now to find itself
consistently and deservedly attracting
the very highest praise for almost everything
it does. The ensemble’s recordings often
appear in the lists of ‘first choices’
and ‘highly recommendeds’ while their
conductor, Rinaldo Alessandrini, commands
a great deal of respect – and it’s growing.
On this CD the seven-strong
ensemble performs polyphonic music by
the rather conservative – at least in
respect of small-scale vocal music –
Alessandro Scarlatti. The two works
which occupy the bulk of this disc are
his Dixit Dominus and Magnificat;
these are supplemented by half a dozen
secular madrigals. At a time when a
more operatic, dramatic - even declamatory
- style was developing and becoming
more and more popular in Italy, Scarlatti
insisted on writing in a more traditional
style. This was probably because its
structure allowed him the better to
meet the challenges he set himself.
But it is to be remembered too that
the churches and ‘official’ patrons
of such music in Rome at the end of
the seventeenth and start of the eighteenth
centuries markedly favoured a more entrenched,
less adventurous, style. What Scarlatti
wrote suited those requirements. And,
for all we can tell, Scarlatti may also
simply have preferred the results of
such a compositional style.
Not that these results
are any the less full of genuine beauty;
nor do they make a diminished impact.
What we have on this CD is music of
the highest order. The Dixit Dominus
is a polished and impactful exercise
in counterpoint redolent of Palestrina.
Replete with fiendishly difficult (mostly
because rhythmically complex) passages,
the piece requires real agility and
precision. The members of Concerto Italiano
have them as needed. It’s a composition
that makes no pretence of covering more
ground than appropriate; Concerto Italiano
perform it with an enthusiastic containment
midway between gusto and reverence which
does everything necessary to expose
its strengths and beauty.
Similarly the Magnificat
makes very real demands on its performers:
listen to its short Amen, for
instance. There’s greater emphasis on
solo singing and the texture is somewhat
sparser; this can be interpreted as
a more ‘modern’ approach. There is greater
translucently, which reminds one of
Corelli (in the Quia respexit,
for example) as much as of Vivaldi,
say. It’s a piece which the performers
allow to unfold slowly and gently, rather
than plough through without attending
to the relationship between words, musical
line and pace merely because the Magnificat
follows a known liturgical pattern.
The madrigals are written
in a rich counterpoint and depart from
the text-led clarity elaborated by Monteverdi
in that the texture and sonic impact
are perhaps less focused. This actually
means that greater levels of skill by
the performers are needed. And they
have them: again, the result is very
pleasing. Their sonic world could be
that of Gesualdo without the dissonances,
or even that of some of the later English
madrigalists: there is a studied evenness,
a control and doggedness containing
the sentiments of these five substantial
and pointed pieces which might belie
the ferocity of their poetry… ‘che vita
omicida’, ‘spegna il tuo ghiaccio l’amoroso
ardore’. Concerto Italiano pitches this
tension and vigour perfectly where conviction
pushes brashness aside.
The recording is unfussy;
the liner notes informative; the text
is provided in French and English as
well as Latin and Italian. At just under
an hour, one might cavil at the length
of the CD, but if you’re looking for
quality over quantity, want to be moved
by the restrained and gentle singing
or even want to sample something of
its time yet reflecting the devotion
of earlier generations, this is a CD
not to be missed.
Mark Sealey
Concerto Italiano: Anna Simboli (soprano);
Elisabetta Tiso (soprano); Paolo Costa
(alto); Gianluca Ferrarini (tenor); Sergio
Foresti (bass); Ignazio Schifani (organ
and harpsichord); Eduardo Eguez (chitarrone)/Rinaldo
Alessandrini
