 |  | Good recording of the standards |  |
The Italian madrigals on this CD don't do much for me. I don't know if it's because I don't know most of them, or because I don't care for the male ensemble performing them. I do like the English CD, though. It's a good reference for many standard madrigals found in the Oxford Book of English Madrigals. The pieces using mixed voices have the clear, light sound with impeccable tuning that one would expect with the Hilliard Ensemble. The pieces using all male voices aren't as good to my ear, with the upper voice sounding a bit strident. As noted in other reviews I've written, I'm a big fan of historical pronunciation which is used in this recording. It adds a nice touch and is well done. I wish more early music ensembles would give attention to this oft-ignored but very important facet of performance. Far from turning the music into a museum piece, it actually has the opposite effect by bringing it back to life.
July 2, 2008| | | A "Regular People" Review | |
So I was on a Renaissance kick for a while and picked this up, first of all, great value. I enjoy listening to a few of these every now and then but can't take too much at once, check out the previews and if you interested, go for it!
March 20, 2007 | | Not stilted but powerfully alive | |
My idea of stilted is to sing these madrigals in the phony, glee-club RP style endured for so many years, that made precious, quaint curiosities of them. The Elizabethan pronunciation on this CD is an eye and ear-opener. We may appreciate how much of that speech actually endures in regional accents in both the US and UK. More importantly, this CD brings us the sounds of the long-forgotten English human beings of the Renaissance, people who drank, fought and screwed, who brought us Shakespeare and the King James Bible. I love this recording.
February 23, 2005 | | Better at Italian than English | |
A stilted style and even more stilted attempts at Renaissance-English pronunciation make the English Madrigal disk a terrible disappointment. All emotional content -- the mellow, lumimous melancholy with flashes of fire that characterizes English music at its best -- has been drained in this attempt to kill, skin, and stuff these madrigals in order to present them as museum pieces. The pronunciation problem is particularly galling -- if these songs are going to be made incomprehensible to modern English speakers, where, then, is their cultural home?
The Italian pieces are presentable, enjoyable, and sung with delicacy and a fine sense of the artifice of the Italian madrigal. Although this recording can be moving, these pieces are performed more with reverence than with love. These are well worth hearing, but the French ensembles sing these with a bit more feeling. Try, say, Ensemble Clément Janequin. July 25, 2003
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