The new Monteverdi performance style spreads...

For months, I have been extolling on this blog a recent Virgin Classics release, Monteverdi Teatro d'Amore, by Christina Pluhar and L'Arpeggiata, as introducing a new style of performance for the secular music of Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643).  Pluhar's recording was made in several sessions during 2007 and 2008, ending in January of the later year.  Now comes a new recording, made in February 2008, that adopts much the same style of interpretation, directed by Claudio Cavina, with soprano Emanuela Galli and instrumentalists of La Venexiana, on the Glossa label.  Can the new approach to secular Monteverdi be spreading?  Did Pluhar and Cavino reach their interpretive approaches independently -- seems likely -- and they are just catching on to something that is "in the air," or is there some common source?

At any event, the new Cavino recording is stunning.  Cavino and his group have recorded all of the 9 books of madrigals by Monteverdi, and they have produced this recording of "lighter" Monteverdi as a pendent to their cycle.  There is some repertory overlap with Pluhar -- enough to provide interesting contrasts in performance decisions -- but there is also plenty on Cavino's recording that is different.  The main differences are that Pluhar has put together a diverse program, mixing instrumental and vocal music, using a team of singers, and drawing the music from the madrigal books, two of the operas, and pieces Monteverdi contributed to the anthology Quarto scherzo delle ariose vaghezze.  By contrast, Cavino has enlisted Ms. Galli as the sole singer, and the program is entirely made up of solo vocal music, centered on the 1632 collection of Scherzi musicali, which also give the album its title.  Galli and Cavino record this cycle complete, prefacing it with one solo piece from the 7th Book of Madrigals, "Con che soavita" (which also is included in Pluhar's program) and two selections from Quarto scherzo (the same two included on Pluhar's program).  He follows the Scherzi musicali songs with the other piece that Monteverdi contributed to Quarto scherzo, "La mia Turca," and then provides three more songs drawn from varied sources, concluding, a bit out of character with the surviving fragment from Monteverdi's lost opera, Arianna, the famous Lamento d'Arianna. 

Pluhar's recording is organized around the theme of theatrical depictions of love.  Cavino's is more interested, with the exception of the finale, with light-hearted good humor.  Another difference is that Pluhar has decided to give a bit of a jazzy swing to two or three numbers.  Cavino refrains from that, although the light and rhythmically lively approach he uses to the more up-tempo numbers comes close to sounding like Pluhar's jazziness.

Galli sings this music with great drama and humor, although I think Pluhar's soprano voices, Nuria Rial and male sopranist Philippe Jaroussky, are truly incomparable while Galli is just extremely good but not quite at their exalted level.  On the other hand, Galli and Cavino present quite a bit of hard-to-find repertory, and their program is skillfully assembled to provide contrast, despite the lack of instrumental interludes.   Anybody who enjoyed hearing Teatro d'Amore and hoped for more Monteverdi performed in a similarly infectious style should seek out the new Glossa disc.