Giovanni Paolo Cima: Vespro Della Beata Virgine – Musica Fiorita – Cantilena Antiqua / Dolci

Choir & Organ (Mar, 2016)
When a liner note opines ‘the quality of the music is in no way inferior to that of Monteverdi’ one’s ears prick up: I won’t argue, as far as it goes, about Giovanni Paulo Cima’s Vespro della Beata Virgine published in Milan in 1610, but don’t get over-excited as this is miniature music, with four soloists and schola (singing antiphons) and, as there are no Psalm or Magnificat settings, the spiritual sensuality of Marian devotion is to the fore. Damiela Dolci’s Musica Fiorita offer spirited and emotionally nuanced interpretations of this and other works from Cima’s Concerti ecclesiastici. Sixty-five years later Cavalli’s Vespero delle Domeniche was published in Venice, now …