Italian Roots of the Baroque, continued

The "L'Aura Soave" ensemble was born in 1995 out of the union of musical and musicological experience and competence of a few musicians and singers, in the surroundings of the Cremona School of Musical Palaeography and Philology.
The ensemble play period instruments or exact replicas and following the performance techniques appropriate to their chosen repertoire they pay close attention to the practices of the period. This choice was however not perceived as an aim but as a way of getting back to an Italian vocal and instrumental tradition based on "belcanto" and inventive performance.
They have taken part in numerous festivals and shows, including in October 1999, by invitation from the Gulbenkian Foundation of Lisbon, performing Frescobaldi's Motets in their entirety and Salomone Rossi's Psalms at the Ancient Music Week in the 1999/2000 season and performing at the XXVIII edition of the Claudio Monteverdi Festival in Cremona with Emma Kirkby and Sophie Daneman.
L'Aura Soave has to its credit many CD's, all of which are world first recordings of previously unpublished pieces of music. They show a particular preference for composers from Cremona.

 

 

—Vincenzo Galilei: Il Fronmino, Venice 1584

    -Fuga

 

—Bernardo Monzino: Il Fronmino, Venice 1584

II. Frammenti del discorso amoroso (Marianna Henricksson, harpsichord). Sibelius Academy CD SRCD-1020

It is suavely urbane, not exactly what one expects from the son of a man who forcefully mocked in print Gioseffo Zarlino’s pedantic dismissal of dissonance. But Michelagnolo would appear to have targeted an audience that preferred the French lute style, technically and expressively, to the more complex, sharply impassioned Italianate approach. He does on rare occasion in his toccatas move into an area of lofty melancholy, and the phrasing in several of his voltas playfully emphasizes the offbeat. But for the most part, the lute music gathered here is of the kind that charms with its simple tunefulness, its clean, two-part writing, and its elegant divisions. 

Anthony Bailes illustrates the difference between Italian and French approaches in this music by adding five selections by Vincenzo. Polymnia will of course be best known, thanks to its inclusion in Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances , but several of the others illustrate better the more complex meters and sudden harmonic shifts of the Italian manner in lute music. These both contrast and complement the rest of the album. 

As to Bailes himself, he studied first with the renowned Diana Poulton, and later, with Eugen Müller-Dombois. His tone is as clean as Galilei’s writing, and mercifully free of all attempts to ruminate and make too much of these simple, straightforward pieces. His phrasing is flexible and flows well, his tempos are energetic. Vincenzo’s more elaborate music is played with similar authority, and a suitable range of color. The sound, too, is excellent: close but slightly resonant, with no mechanical noise. 

Definitely recommended. Those who seek greater complexity may want to seek out the music of Giovanni Kapsberger or Francesco da Milano, but there’s much to be said in favor of these pleasant miniatures, so deftly played.