There's a new gang of Monteverdi interpreters on the block, and they're scarily good. The young French ensemble La Tempête and conductor Simon-Pierre Bestion offer an uncannily vivid reading of Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine, SV 206, the so-called "Vespers of 1610." Bestion starts from the fact that the Vespers were, even more than the opera Orfeo that preceded it by three years, a virtuoso compositional display of all the techniques in the air in the fast-changing scene of the early 17th century. It has florid ...
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There's a new gang of Monteverdi interpreters on the block, and they're scarily good. The young French ensemble La Tempête and conductor Simon-Pierre Bestion offer an uncannily vivid reading of Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine, SV 206, the so-called "Vespers of 1610." Bestion starts from the fact that the Vespers were, even more than the opera Orfeo that preceded it by three years, a virtuoso compositional display of all the techniques in the air in the fast-changing scene of the early 17th century. It has florid monody; it has madrigal-like passages; it has Venetian polychoral styles; it has an impressive instrumental sonata; it has old-style polyphony rooted in chant, which ties the whole thing together. The work is a stunning example of unity in diversity, and that unity stands up to the diversity Bestion emphasizes: each type of music is given its own distinctive interpretation. The choral passages, with a folklike full-throated quality, may be the most different from what you've heard in...
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