Product Description
CD88517 Monteverdi Vespro della Beata Vergine 1610 - L'Arpeggiata
A recent CD release that has excited much interest is L'Arpeggiata's
performance of the Monteverdi Vespers. Anyone contemplating purchase of
the CD (recorded under studio conditions and I understand a DVD will also
be available) may be interested to hear the ensemble's near
contemporaneous concert performance in Barcelona before an audience.
Performed here with one voice per line, and a faster tempo than is usually
heard.
Monteverdi, Claudio (1567-1643)
Vespro della Beata Vergine (1610)
NĂşria Rial (soprano),
Raquel Andueza (soprano),
Miriam Allan (soprano),
Luciana Mancini (mezzo-soprano),
Pascal Bertin (countertenor),
Emiliano Gonzales Toro (tenor),
Markus Brutscher (tenor),
Jan van Elsacker (tenor),
Fernando GuimarĂŁes (tenor),
Fulvio Bettini (baritone),
Hubert Claessens (bass),
JoĂŁo Fernandes (bass),
Ensemble: L'Arpeggiata
Festival de MĂşsica Antiga de Barcelona
Pablo Casals Auditorium, Barcelona
2010
Broadcast BBC Radio 3 09 April 2011
FLAC
ArkivMusic.com review of the commercial CD:
L’Arpeggiata, the multi-faceted ensemble led by Christina Pluhar,
celebrates its 10th birthday by marking the 400th anniversary of
Monteverdi’s Vespro della beata vergine, one of the supreme masterpieces
of music history. As Pluhar explains: “All 30 singers and instrumentalists
on our recording have had a long and emotional relationship with this
work.”
2010 marked the 400th anniversary of one of the landmarks of musical
history, Monteverdi’s Vespro della beata Vergine, better known simply as
the Vespers. Exactly 50 times younger is the multi-faceted vocal and
instrumental ensemble L’Arpeggiata, founded 10 years ago by Christina
Pluhar. Pluhar’s achievement was recognised in 2009 with Germany’s
prestigious Echo Klassik award for L’Arpeggiata’s first Virgin Classics
release, Teatro d’Amore, which presented a diverse, improvisational
programme of items by Monteverdi. Here, Pluhar and her musicians engage
more formally with an extended work by the same composer.
“The Vespers is one of the supreme masterpieces of music history,” says
Pluhar. “Monteverdi exploits all the skills and compositional techniques
that existed at the time. All 30 singers and instrumentalists on our
recording have had a long and emotional relationship with this work and
were very excited by creating this recording with L'Arpeggiata. Over the
last 25 years, the approach to performing the Vespers has changed
considerably, and hopefully l'Arpeggiata's version will make its mark."
This Vespers is the fruit of L’Arpeggiata's collaboration with the
Festival de MĂşsica Antiga de Barcelona, De Bijloke music centre in Ghent
and L’Arsenal concert hall in Metz in eastern France, which, with its
much-praised acoustic, was the venue for recording the work. L’Arpeggiata
was in residence at L’Arsenal over the 2009-10 season.
“We have taken an intimate approach: the way the music is written suggests
not a choir, but a single voice for each line,” explains Pluhar. “It is
always very important for me to work with voices that I feel match the
colours in the music, and I have made different choices for each section
of the Vespers.” Notably, the often low-lying alto parts were shared
between mezzo-sopranos, countertenors and high tenors. “The twelve singers
on this recording all have wonderful voices and are astounding soloists
who bring both tonal beauty and a strong theatrical presence. I gave them
a lot of responsibility in the ensemble work, which I feel brings us
closer to spirit of the original performances. Polyphony for six or ten
solo voices does not need too much intervention from a conductor in a
classical sense.”
Pluhar herself plays the theorbo in this recording, and L’Arpeggiata’s
famed improvisational skills are brought to new heights in the spectacular
ornamentation by the cornetti and violins. Again inspired by the music’s
colours, Pluhar’s chosen instrumentation includes two organs for the
sections with double choir, and features the psaltery; its timbre is
closely linked with L’Arpeggiata’s soundworld and Pluhar feels it evokes
archaic scenes at moments in the score.