Carlo Gesualdo: Madrigali
Release Date: 2019
Label: Winter & Winter
This recording presents fresh readings of 18 of Gesualdo’s madrigals from Books V and VI, combining rigorous stylistic understanding and tonal beauty with an overriding focus on the music’s extreme expressive vision.
Description
This recording presents fresh readings of 18 of Gesualdo’s madrigals from Books V and VI, combining rigorous stylistic understanding and tonal beauty with an overriding focus on the music’s extreme expressive vision. The late madrigals of Gesualdo exert a strange and enduring fascination on the modern musical imagination. Listening today to these extraordinary messages of anguish and ecstasy, we are drawn back to his flame like lovers who can’t let go, into the warp of chromatic harmony, the emotional hyper-intensity and mysterious otherness of this most tantalising early Baroque figure.
Carlo Gesualdo Fifth and Sixth Books of Madrigals (selections)
Delivery & returns
Delivery costs: £2 UK, £5 EU & £7 worldwide. Items are usually dispatched within 48 hours.
Full refunds are available up to 28 days after receipt, payable on return of the items.
Contact manager@exaudi.org.uk to set up return delivery.
Reviews
“EXAUDI’s new Gesualdo disc is a stunner…They sing with impeccable definition and accuracy, letting each dissonance burn and scorch until the ear longs for release.” – The Guardian
“…Grandios, wie das Exaudi Vocal Ensemble diese gespenstischen Klänge einfängt. Schon nach kurzem Hören darf man feststellen: Es ist perfekt. So bleibt es auch.” Preis der Deutschen Schallplatten Kritik Bestenliste 4. 2019 “Chorwerke” (Nov 2019)
“…with their excellent recording of Gesualdo madrigals, ‘miniature melodramas that sum up the agonies of unrequited love with the power of Shakespearian sonnets… The voices of Exaudi are superbly attuned to each other, but are also characterful as individuals and highly responsive to the texts. Inner tensions are explored with selective use of vibrato to give ornamental and expressive weight, and there is a breathtakingly wide spectrum of colour and dynamic shading…What makes Exaudi special to my ears is the red-blooded way in which they tackle this kind of text, line-editing their response and changing their expression within phrases to deliver maximum effect.” MusicWeb International
“Exaudi’s one-to-a-part approach stands comparison with the finest continental specialists in this repertory…The unanimity of purpose and the sense of engagement with Gesualdo’s rigorous caprice sustains and richly rewards repeated listening. These are deeply intelligent and attractive performances.” Gramophone Magazine
“…this excellent recording which shows striking levels of vocal virtuosity and a wider range of vocal colours than other recordings of this repertory. These singers are not afraid of dissonance, nor of making listeners squirm before releasing them with a harmonic resolution, however temporary…The singers show great confidence in maneouvring around Gesualdo’s harmonic shifts and have a highly-informed understanding of the text, nowhere more than in O dolorosa gioia, o soave dolore (O painful joy, O sweet suffering) whose text could sum up the whole programme.” Early Music Review
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