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GRAMOPHONE (Awards Issue /2013)
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Reviewer: David
Vickers
Primi Toni sing Simonetti’s Venetian collection
‘Ghirlanda Sacra’ (Venice, 1625) is an anthology of 44 motets for solo
voice and basso continuo compiled by Leonardo Simonetti, a castrato in
Monteverdi’s choir at St Mark’s. Almost all of the composers selected were
based in Venice or the Veneto, including the usual suspects (Monteverdi,
Grandi, Rovetta, Barbarino) but also many less familiar contemporaries;
Cavalli’s Cantate Domino is included under his real name, Pietro Francesco
Caletti Bruni. Trombonists might recognise the name of Dario Castello but
the dance-like Exultate Deo is his only piece of vocal music that survives.
Nicola Lamon revolves between six different singers and varying combinations
of continuo instrumentation in order to enhance textural variety; the
simplest combination of voice and just theorbo and keyboard proves to be the
most natural and persuasive.
The anthology kicks off with four Monteverdi motets; the seldom-recorded O quam pulchra es is sung smoothly by tenor Alberto Allegrezza, who also sings sensitively in Grandi’s O quam tu pulchra es (the only famous piece in the collection), and his gentle high range is excellent in Congratulamini mihi by Giovanni Paolo Caprioli (the musical abbot of Scandiano). Roberta Andalò gets the lion’s share of soprano songs: Monteverdi’s Ecce sacrum paratum is sung prettily and without quasi-operatic affectation, but there are technical wobbles, such as during Rovetta’s O Maria quam pulchra es. Claudia Conese’s soft piety suits two motets by pioneering monodist
Bartolomeo
Barbarino, and Diana Trivellato sings brightly (and often sharp) in Jubilate Deo
by the 13-year-old St Mark’s chorister Domenico Obizzi. There is greater
declamatory presence from the impressive tenor Raffaele Giordani in Hodie
apparuerunt delitiae paradisi by Giovanni Pietro Berti (second organist at St
Mark’s). Countertenor Jacopo Facchini is mildly unsteady at times but gives
fluent performances of Regnum mundi by Giulio Cesare Martinengo (Monteverdi’s
predecessor at St Mark’s) and O bone Jesu by Giovanni Maria Scorzuto (which
unusually has written continuo interludes). Ensemble Primi Toni also throw in
some short instrumental introductions by Gabrieli and Kapsberger. There is
something to be said for the straightforward warts-and-all honesty of the
natural sound, and this is a useful reference tool for early-17th-century
Venetian church music beyond Monteverdi.
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