Sacred Madrigals by Barbara Strozzi on Tactus

courtesy of Naxos of America

According to my records, I have not reported on a recording on the Italian Tactus label since 2014, back when I was writing for Examiner.com. This label was founded in 1986 by Serafino Rossi, who was particularly interested in neglected music from the Renaissance and Baroque composers. The latest effort in this undertaking is a two-CD compilation the fourteen sacred madrigals collected under the title Sacri Musicali Affetti (sacred musical dispositions).This was the Opus 5 of Barbara Strozzi, published in Venice in 1655.

By way of a frame of reference, this would have been about a dozen years after the death of Claudio Monteverdi. Strozzi was born in 1619, which happens to be the year in which Monteverdi completed his seventh book of madrigals. While I have been unable to establish any personal connection between Monteverdi and Strozzi, her best-known teacher was Francesco Cavalli. According to her Wikipedia page, about three-quarters of her published compositions were written for soprano. That would include all of the Sacri Musicali Affetti madrigals, although two of them were scored for soprano and alto.

The performing ensemble on the Tactus album is Aurata Fonte. The alto is Andrea Arrivabene; and two sopranos share the entire collection, Miho Kamiya and Anna Simboli. Continuo is shared by Valeria Montanari on harpsichord and Giuseppe Monari on organ, often performing together. The other continuo player is Perikli Pite on gamba.

Here in San Francisco Strozzi may not be familiar to many; but it would be unfair to characterize her music as “neglected.” In October of 2019, she was featured in the Voices of Music program given the title Concerto della Donne (consort of women). More recently the eclectic program that the Chordless duo of soprano Sara LeMesh and pianist Allegra Chapman prepared for Old First Concerts in January of 2020 included one of her vocal duos (with LeMesh joined by mezzo Kate McKinney). During lockdown, the streamed performance by the San Francisco Girls Chorus of Antonio Vivaldi’s only surviving oratorio, Juditha Triumphans (Judith triumphant), also included one of Strozzi’s polyphonic madrigals from her Opus 1 collection and one of the fifteen cantatas in her Opus 7 collection, Diporti di Euterpe (Euterpe’s pleasure), scored for soprano and continuo. Another notable streamed offering involved the Aizuri Quartet (violinists Miho Saegusa and Emma Frucht, violist Ayane Kozasa, and cellist Karen Ouzounian), which arranged Strozzi’s music for their Shriver Hall Concert Series program, all of whose selections were written by women composers.

Nevertheless, even if Strozzi has become familiar to many local listeners, the availability of a recording of polished performances of one of her madrigal collections is likely to be appreciated.