Troubadour extraordinaire Joel Frederiksen returns yet again with another album of singin’ and playin’, and the results are predictably fine. This time the focus is on music of Giulio Caccini and fellow sixteenth-century comrades who transformed the complex and polyphonic music of early Renaissance into a new style that placed much more emphasis on the declamatory and emotive meaning of the texts being set. This style called “stile recitativo” led to the first fledgling developments of opera – curiously set to the same storyline: that of L’Euridice set by both Caccini and Jacopo Peri. The ”stile recitativo” was linked with the Florentine Camerata’s development in the late 16th century, and featured the passionate and emerging humanistic need to vocally display the innermost conflicts of the human drama.
Anyone who has ever played a guitar while singing along knows of the difficulties of this art, and what Frederiksen accomplishes in his performances, with not-always-easy lute parts and frighteningly difficult vocal parts – especially when we get nearer to composers of Monteverdi’s ilk who never quite gave up on polyphonic accompaniments – is quite the feat. I will admit that there are a few times he seems to almost lose himself, but considering he is probably the first one in years that has the ability, talent, and nerve to revive this sort of artistry, I think he can be forgiven for any slight shortcomings.
HM’s sound is resonant and engulfing, as in a superb concert hall. The Ensemble Phoenix Munich, consisting of Domen Marincic (viola da gamba), Reinhild Waldek (harp), and Axel Wolf (theorbo, lute, tiorbino, guitar) are as stylistically attuned as they are subtle and skillful in their performances. Full texts and translations, just what the consumer ordered.
TrackList:
KAPSBERGER: Pieta di chi si more, Toccata V; FALCONIERI: Armillao ingrate, Filli vezzosa; D’INDIA: Che farai Meliseo?; DALLA CASA: lo canterei d’amor; LANDI: Superbi colli, Se tu mi lasci perfida tuo danno; MARINI: O vagha Tortorella; CACCINI: Dalla porta d’oriente, Muove si dolce, Chi mi confort’ahime, lo che l’eta solea viver nel fango, Deh chi d’alloro, Amor ch’attendi; PULIASCHI: Locar sopra gl’abissi; MONTEVERDI: lo che nell’otio nacqui e d’otio vissi
— Steven Ritter
