Some readers may recall that one of the most interesting events I attended prior to the onset of the COVID pandemic took place in mid-February of 2020 at St. Dominic’s Catholic Church. This was a duo performance by Guillermo Pérez, Director of the Tasto Solo early music ensemble, performing on an organetto, and one of his vocalists, soprano Anne-Kathryn Olsen. The title of the program was La Flor en Paradis [the flower in paradise]: the roots of song in medieval Europe; but, as I observed in my account, the selections had as much to do with the emergence of polyphonic music as with those “roots of song.”
This coming Friday Alia-Vox will release the fourth album of performances by Tasto Solo. Pérez and Olsen are joined by baritone Riccardo Pisani, harpsichordist Bertrand Cuiller, harpist Bérengère Sardin, Pau Marcos on viola bastarda, and lutenist Bor Zuljan. As is often the case, Amazon.com has created a Web page for processing pre-orders.
Cover of the album being discussed (courtesy of Tasto Solo)
The full title of the album is Eros & Subtilitas: Capricci, Madrigali e Danze in Dialogo. The repertoire has advanced beyond the Middle Ages to the sixteenth century. The contributing composers are Philippe Verdelot, Clément Janequin, Jacques Arcadelt, Vincenzo Ruffo, Domenico Ferrabosco, and Jhan Gero. Due to the LP albums I collected through the Musical Heritage Society, a few of these names (Janequin and Arcadelt) were familiar to me. On the other hand all of the tracks on this new release were “first contact” listening experiences.
The album is the second Tasto Solo release to focus on music from the so-called “early modern” period. According to its Wikipedia entry, that period covers a broad span from 1500 to 1800; so one might call this an album of “early early modern” music! The accompanying booklet provides an English-language version of an essay by Pérez, which discusses those early modern features associated with the selections on the album. For my part I am content to approach the instrumental selections as early approaches to what we now call “jamming.” Where the vocal selections are concerned, they are at their most interesting when the parts for Olsen and Pisani interleave.
It is also worth noting that all of the compositions collected for the release are less than five minutes in duration. It would be fair to say that there is much to enjoy from both the texts of the songs (which have been translated into English) and the instrumental performances, which show signs of moving beyond the notation to expressively deployed embellishments. Given that those Musical Heritage LPs are no longer with me, I found that Eros & Subtilitas delightfully triggered memories of my first encounters with this “early modern” period.
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