Album review: Gesualdo, Fifth Book of Madrigals

Gesualdo: Fifth Book of Madrigals. Photo / Supplied

You may have a Hilliard Ensemble CD without knowing it, if you are a fan of Norwegian jazz saxophonist Jan Garbarek. Their latest collaboration, Officium Novum, is securely chartbound and fuelling a European tour for the musicians. Meanwhile, the Hilliard's recording of Gesualdo Madrigals reveals the style that has made them one of the world's finest vocal ensembles.

To some, the music of Carlo Gesualdo (1568-1613) might seem more cult than classic. Yet the Italian has admirers in high places; four operas have been based on his life, Aldous Huxley has celebrated him in words, Werner Herzog on film.

This Prince of Venosa has garnered some notoriety, too. Firstly, for brutally murdering his first wife and her lover; secondly, for his radical musical language, featuring startling harmonies, centuries ahead of their time. The emphasis in these 21 short madrigals is on anguish.

The six singers, with soprano Monika Mauch blending seamlessly with the group's two countertenors, discourse on love in various shades of frustration. There is much weeping and pain, all deliciously caught in piercing dissonances and sharp, sudden chord shifts. This sort of writing could be a musical minefield for the unwary, yet the Hilliards create vignettes of blemishless beauty.

The four principal singers of the Hilliard Ensemble turn up in a more contemporary vein on Boris Yoffe's Song of Songs, in tandem with the Rosamunde Quartet. The Russian-Israeli composer has written five fairly sombre settings from the Song of Solomon, spare elegies in which the singers and instrumentalists make every note and phrase count.

Unlike the Gesualdo disc, this comes with two persuasive testimonials in the CD booklet. In one, Yoffe's composition teacher, Wolfgang Rihm, remembers a possessed young composer who wrote a string quartet a day and brought a box of them along to his final examination.

Rihm's final assessment of his former student sums up the almost hypnotic appeal of this recording - music that "doesn't complain" and "stays beautiful and giving".

Classic CD

Gesualdo - Fifth Book of Madrigals (ECM)
Stars: 5/5
Boris Yoffe - Song of Songs (ECM, both through Ode Records)
Stars: 4/5