Carlo Gesualdo: Madrigals Book 3 – La Compagnia Del Madrigale

   in Early Music Today (Dec, 2016)
In the late 1970s and into the 1980s, it was an English group, the Consort of Musicke under director Anthony Rooley, that seized hold of the previously rather neglected Italian madrigal repertoire and injected it with vim, vigour, and not a little tongue-in-cheek fun. As a result, an area of the vocal repertoire often deemed less significant or weighty parts of composers’ outputs suddenly had new life breathed into it, and encouraged the exploration and rediscovery of the music by Italian ensembles; most noteworthy were Marco Longhini’s Delitiae Musicae, Concerto Italiano under Rinaldo Alessandrini, and La Venxiana, directed by Claudio Cavina.

All three groups tackled on disc the music of one …