Vêpres de 1610

Description

Monteverdi's Vespers (1610) constitute the major work at the beginning of Baroque music. They sit at the crossroads of Renaissance polyphony and the new dramatic style found in his first opera, L'Orfeo. The Vespers redefined the contours of sacred music: music of great emotional power, exceptional virtuosity, drawing from the past while projecting into the future. Monteverdi specialists I Fagiolini and Robert Hollingworth waited for their fortieth anniversary to record the collection from 1610. The result of a lifetime of work, this recording reveals all the subtlety and dramatic richness of the work in their complete interpretation. Historically informed, this recording features a higher organ pitch (then called mezzo tuono), a brighter and perfectly suited cornetto and sackbut sound, a new approach to changes in meter (perhaps more Renaissance?), and an intimate and deeply personal singing style.