Giaches de Wert (1535-1596)
Madrigals from the 7th, 8th, 11th Book

I. La Gerusalemme Liberata (Tasso)

01 Sovente, allor che su gli estivi ardori
02 Giunto alla tomba
03 Usciva omai dal molle e fresco grembo
04 Vezzosi augelli infra le verdi fronde
05 Forsennata gridava
06 Qual musico gentil
07 Misera non credea
08 Giunto alla tomba (instr.)

II. Il Pastor Fido (Guarini)

09 Cruda Amarilli
10 O primavera gioventù dell’anno
11 Ah, dolente partita
12 Udite lagrimosi

Editing a new CD of La Venexiana is always a delightful experience: impeccable performances, which after almost ten discs can be said to approach perfection, sublime music, evoking an era and places fascinating and unrepeatable, the duchies of northern Italy during the time which led to the Seicento, and poetry (Petrarch, Tasso, Guarini...) of an intoxicating beauty…

We have here the ninth CD by an ensemble unanimously acclaimed as the best Italian vocal group presently on the scene. Following the lasting success of their Monteverdi, Gesualdo, Marenzio and Sigismondo recordings, they now turn to the Fleming closely related to the courts of Ferrara and Mantua, Giaches de Wert, who paved the way to the renovation of the madrigal that would later be firmly established by Monteverdi and Sigismondo d’India. For this recording Claudio Cavina has chosen the lovely madrigals that Wert composed on the poems from Jerusalem Delivered by Tasso and Il Pastor Fido by Guarini, which are taken from his 7th, 8th and 11th Books of Madrigals.

Unquestionably another gem from La Venexiana that we are proud to include in our catalogue.