Libro primo de madrigalo (2001)/ D'India, Sigismondo

In 1605, Monteverdi’s dissonant depiction of ‘cruel Amarilli’ was condemned as ‘a deformation of… true harmony’. But his Amarilli was a mere tease compared with D’India’s chromatic shrew, one year later. La Venexiana navigates unerringly through the astonishingly convoluted harmony which opens ‘Cruda Amarilli’, the fourth madrigal of his first published collection. The group is capable of totally focused sound without a flicker of vibrato, setting up a spine-chilling sonority at the very opening of the first madrigal. Elsewhere, each voice in turn becomes ardently animated in expressive individual lines of imitations. (...)|