O Felice Morire: Aire & Madrigali: Firenze 1600

MARBECKS STAFF PICK - BEST RECORDINGS 2008

"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."
(AudAud.com)

Caccini was one of the principal creators of the stile recitativo which, at the very end of the Renaissance, led to a meteoric ascent in popularity of the solo voice. The decoration of the arias in his Nuove Musiche is never gratuitous, but always at the service of the passions of the soul, the affetti. The whole art of this style consists in maintaining a sort of expressive nonchalance or sprezzatura, characterised by elegance and lightness. With his meticulous interpretative approach and remarkable deep bass voice, Joel Frederiksen breathes new life into the theatricality of the nascent Baroque.