NOTE: We continue our long and fruitful association with our partners at Radio Netherlands in presenting a series of concerts from the 2006 Holland Festival of Early Music at Utrecht. We will also direct listeners to their web site, which will provide more in-depth information about the music and performers we hear as well as more information about the festival (www.rnmusic.nl).

For its 25th anniversary, the entire 2006 festival was dedicated to the early Italian 17th century:

Le Nuove Musiche: The Seicento in Italy

#07-01: 12/25/06 -- Salomone Rossi (1570-c.1630)--The Dedalus Ensemble guides us through the exquisite work of one of the greatest Jewish composers of the early Baroque.

#07-02: 01/01/06 -- Il Canto delle Dame--Women composers achieved more fame as composers at this time than any since the Troubadour era. The Concert Soave featuring the brilliant Maria Cristina Kiehr treat us to music by Barbara Strozzi, Caterina Assandra, Isabella Leonarda, Francesca Caccini, and other remarkable women in this concert.

#07-03: 01/08/06 -- Domenico Mazzochi (1592-1665)--On to Rome with musicologist Monique Zanetti's ensemble Le Paladins--born in a little town in the Roman suburbs, Mazzochi soon became a favorite of cardinals and popes.

#07-04: 01/15/06 -- Italianate Austrians--Frequent Festival favorites Concerto Palatino give us two composers influenced by Gabrieli--Johann Stadlmayr (c. 1580-1648) and Giovanni Valentini (1582/3-1649).

#07-05: 01/22/06 -- Don Carlo Gesualdo (c.1561-1613)--Who isn't fascinated by the murderer prince? The fine Italian ensemble La Venexiana gives us highlights of the madrigal Books Four and Five.

#07-06: 01/29/06 -- Claudio Monteverdi --The towering genius who presides over the entire transition from the Renaissance to the baroque is treated in this concert as the person who most effectively took us from polyphonic madrigals to the dramatic vocal solo with basso continuo, leading us into the next musical era--the ensemble L'Arpeggiata performs.

#07-07: 02/05/06 -- Giovanni Gabrieli (1554/7-1615)--Another "big sound" concert as La Fenice joins the Chamber Choir of Namur in a recreation of the massive services at San Marco created for feast days by the great Gabrieli.

#07-08: 02/12/07 --La Vita humana--One of the two massive reconstructions for the Festival was the operatic oratorio by Marco Marazzoli written for Queen Christina of Sweden, after her stunning conversion to Catholicism; we'll hear a performance by the ensemble Le Poeme Harmonique.

#07-09: 02/19/07 --L'Impermesta, Part I--After Monteverdi's death in 1543, Francesco Cavalli was recognized, in the words of the librettist and commissioning patron, as "the Greatest Composer in Italy." This week and next we'll hear the great reconstruction of the opera commissioned by Cardinal Giancarlo de Medici for the long-awaited birth of the Spanish Hapsburgs' prince and heir to the throne.

#07-10: 02/26/07 --L'Impermesta, Part II--We continue with the reconsctruction of Cavalli's unique opera with solosts and the ensemble La Sfera Armoniosa.