I have held on to this recording deliberately for a while. It is one of those CDs that leaves you so impressed after the first listening that you don't immediately know how to write about it without slipping into cliché. The circumstances may have played a part as well: in recent weeks I had the good fortune to hear several performances of Monteverdi's Vespro della Beata Vergine, both live and on disc. No two of them sound alike.
I Fagiolini under the direction of Robert Hollingworth also resolutely chart their own course. In the splendid booklet, Hollingworth explains at length why he makes certain choices, from tempi to pitch. You could discuss these for hours. Some will embrace them immediately, others perhaps less so. For my part, I found it especially refreshing to hear a performance that dares to depart from the familiar path.
There is one thing I miss, however. Over the years I have grown very attached to performances in which the Gregorian antiphons are given a place between the psalms and motets. They provide resting points amid all the vocal and instrumental fireworks. Here they are absent. Perhaps this had to do with the available playing time. Whatever the reason, I caught myself repeatedly longing for those moments of pause.
Despite the single-voice-per-part scoring, the whole sounds astonishingly grand. The music regularly leaps out of the loudspeakers. The large psalms bristle with energy, while transparency is preserved. New, virtuosic details keep surfacing, both in the singers and in the expansive instrumental ensemble "The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble", which is by no means the least of them.
The tempi are also striking. Especially in the passages in triple metre, Hollingworth sometimes opts for surprising solutions. He explains these at length in the booklet. The same goes for the discussion surrounding the pitch used. These are subjects on which music lovers could effortlessly spend an entire evening. My advice? Do let the tenors have their say. After all, they are the ones who are regularly sent up toward the ceiling. I speak from experience. Fortunately, the tenors of I Fagiolini have more than enough reserve to do so with apparent ease.
When I first listened to the recording, it was above all Nigra sum that blew me completely out of my chair. Nicholas Mulroy turns this relatively short page into a small masterpiece in its own right. The way he draws the text toward himself and then gives it back to the listener is truly impressive. Four minutes and seventeen seconds to die for. Do listen to the "veni" around 3:10. Heavenly!
But the entire disc is full of moments like these. Everywhere you hear attention to detail, to ornamentation and to text. The cornetti shine, the strings lend the music extra lustre, and the continuo group keeps everything constantly in motion. More important still: you hear musicians who visibly take pleasure in what they are doing. That "joy of singing" radiates from beginning to end of this recording.
It is also notable how broadly Hollingworth has conceived this project, far beyond a mere CD recording. The extensive sponsor lists at the back of the booklet are an early indication of this. Whoever then visits the I Fagiolini website soon discovers that these Vespers form part of a much larger story. There are films about the recording, background videos, podcasts, courses and all kinds of online material. You can even find Vespers merchandise there. That may sound somewhat odd for music from 1610, but in a sense it fits perfectly with our time. Monteverdi lives here not only on disc, but also on social media, in educational projects and within a whole community of listeners. Monteverdi in the twenty-first century, so to speak.
Of the many small-scale performances I have heard in recent years, this one undoubtedly belongs to the absolute top. Hollingworth keeps asking questions and keeps the discussion, and therefore the interest, alive. And meanwhile he delivers a recording that bursts with energy, musicality and enthusiasm, from the first note to the last page of the Magnificat.
