Maria Cristina Kiehr - Monteverdi: Pianto della Madonna (1999)

Monteverdi's larger choral pieces are so masterly that they tend to overshadow his chamber scale sacred music the solo works in particular. Occasionally one or two of these exquisite motets will appear on a collection such as Paul McCreesh's Venetian Vespers, but rarely do they become the focus of an entire recording as they are here. The much-admired early-music diva Maria Cristina Kiehr has a slightly constricted quality to her voice that won't appeal to everyone, but her very narrow vibrato colors her sound without affecting her accuracy of pitch, spotless coloratura, or blend with period instruments (played beautifully here by Concerto Soave). Kiehr also uses her command of dynamics and phrasing with a subtlety that really puts the rhetoric of each piece across--check out her echo effects and crescendos in the motet "for solo voice in dialogue" Jubilet and the joyful Laudate Dominum. Her gentle manner works especially well with the title track: the Pianto della Madonna is Monteverdi's own reworking of his famous Lamento d'Arianna as a solo depicting the Virgin Mary's grief at the foot of the Cross. The slightly overwrought distress of the original Lamento could be inappropriate to such a sacred subject, but Kiehr's emotive yet dignified approach in the Pianto has a genuinely moving effect. -- Matthew Westphal