On the Monteverdi performances:
…some of the most exquisitely intense vocal music ever written…

The result is undoubtedly an engaging and effective concert on disc that has gained much from I Fagiolini’s recent dramatised performances of the Fourth Book of Madrigals (soon to be issued on DVD).

Do not miss this wide-ranging survey on any account.

The performances are as beautiful as they are careful and stylish. The singers (there are seven in all) are highly expressive in solo stints and handsomely balanced in ensembles… This release guarantees both immediate and lasting satisfaction. It belongs in any decent Monteverdi collection.

Engaging convincingly in the Italian baroque, the one-per-part singers sigh, plead and agonise like lovers in the unaccompanied choral recitatives (madrigals). Instruments are now part of the I Fagiolini fold now: solo madrigalists bathe in beautiful, moaning gut-strung violins, plunking chittarone and glittering harpsichord.

This is Monteverdi madrigal singing of the very highest order, bringing his whole kaleidoscope of emotions so vividly to life that the listener is drawn into the very heart of the music and enabled to experience something of the over-whelming impact which these sensational new pieces surely made on their first astonished hearers

Monteverdi’s response to the pains and pleasures of love, is the proof it provides that the best way to convey the impression of spontaneity is to pay meticulous attention to detail. This is especially obvious in impassioned solos such as ‘Partenza amorosa’, an extended monologue in which Giles Underwood gives every word and note its proper, perfectly judged emphasis, and every phrase its proper pace and direction. In this way he conveys the fluctuations of the music’s emotional temperature, as hopeless, hushed heartbreak vies with violent outbursts of bitterness. Ensemble pieces benefit from the same approach… The singer’s fine performances are exquisitely enhanced by the continuo group’s rich sound and imaginative ornamentation.

Anyone who has ever loved and lost cannot fail to be moved by this.

Though their repertoire stretches from ‘The Cries of London’ to improvised songs in Soweto, I Fagiolini are most seductive and persuasive in Monteverdi… Frankly you won’t hear madrigals better sung.

It’s put together with imagination, wit and profound admiration for the expressive power of Monteverdi’s word setting and every number is performed with the same combination of sterling values.

Whether in impassioned monologues or ecstatic ensemble pieces, I Fagiolini’s superbly responsive singing gives this collection of some of Monteverdi’s most vividly expressive madrigals a wonderful air of emotional spontaneity.

Critic’s Choice Richard Lawrence