Concerto Italiano & Rinaldo Alessandrini - Palestrina: Il primo libro de Madrigali a quattro voci (2012)

Pierluigi Palestrina is considered the father of religious music, and by Verdi that of Italian music. He is the cantor of the Counter-Reformation style. The Primo Libro di Madrigali a quatro voci was, chronologically speaking, the second work that Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina published. It was printed in 1555 in Rome by the publishers and printers Valerio and Luigi Dorico. Palestrina will deny all his madrigals at the end of his life. On the title page the composer refers to himself as «Cantore nella Cappella di N[ostro] S[ignore]», a title which in Rome at that time represented the highest position to which a musician might aspire. In the twenty-nine madrigals selected here, we retrieve the art of the "Stile Antico", this acrobatic counterpoint, interlaced with melodic lines distributed between the four voices. The cantus Gloria Banditelli and Claudio Cavina from the 1994 Concerto Italiano render them with naturalness within an Ensemble which has always been characterized by subtle inflections of phrasing and a constant trueness of expression.