In this programme entitled Variations on Variations, Rinaldo Alessandrini, one of the today’s references on Baroque music, has chosen to adapt the Goldberg Variations and the Aria variata alla maniera italiana - initially composed for the keyboard - for small string ensemble, from duo to quartet.

Despite the public context – the story is played out against the backdrop of the Olympic Games – this is a drama which focuses on the personal predicaments of the principal characters, each of whom faces an interesting conflict between head and heart somewhere along the line. This is more apparent from Metastasio's words than from Vivaldi's music, to be honest, but that isn't to say that the composer has been unresponsive. The most effective and intimate moments occur in the recitatives, which are fluidly conversational and full of realistic interruptions, questions and exclamations, all of which Vivaldi handles with considerable dramatic skill.

Extraordinarily, Alessandro Scarlatti (who died in 1725 and forms a strong bridge between the mature Baroque and later classical traditions, according to musicologist Edward Dent) wrote some sixty-four operas, twenty oratorios, hundreds of chamber cantatas, and a host of madrigals, masses, motets, toccatas, concertos, sonatas and symphonies. Very little of this is heard today, sadly, except in specialist circles. Perhaps one of the more popularly performed pieces is 'Abramo, il tuo sembiante' (a Christmas cantata). When Handel visited Italy between 1706 and 1710, he met Scarlatti and may even have studied with him. This performance of said cantata is well within the Italian style - clear lines and intricate ornamentation.

Claudio Monteverdi's Seventh Book of Madrigals have been recorded well by several early music groups, but one expects superior readings from harpsichordist Rinaldo Alessandrini and his vocal-instrumental ensemble Concerto Italiano, and indeed, one gets them here. Alessandrini's versions are on the spare side, with seven voices and an instrumental ensemble of 13 that includes three continuo instruments plus percussion, with Alessandrini's harpsichord prominent in the mix, but he has all the equipment he needs to deliver a really distinctive "concerto," as the title of the Seventh Book boldly proclaims itself. With this book, Monteverdi moved decisively away from the old polyphonic madrigal ideal and toward the text-based settings that would be the norm for vocal music over the next four centuries and counting.

Don't let the startling double-time opening of this Gloria put you off–listen with an open mind and you'll be surprised at how much sense it makes. Rinaldo Alessandrini's reading has many such surprises; some movements are taken very quickly, others surprisingly slowly, yet his choices seem fresh instead of perverse. The Magnificat is lesser known and thus less surprising, but it's every bit as lively. The soloists all sing nicely; the clear-voiced York and vigorous Mingardo provide imaginative ornaments. The excellent French chorus Akademia and Alessandrini's orchestra don't miss a single one of Alessandrini's beats.

Monteverdi was only 23 when he published his Second Book of Madrigals in 1590, but he was already a master of the form, and these contrapuntally lively pieces, with their supple and astute text setting, are crowning works of late Renaissance secular polyphony. With this release of the Second Book, Rinaldo Alessandrini moves closer to his goal of recording all of Monteverdi's eight Books of Madrigals, performed by Concerto Italiano, the ensemble he founded in 1984. The series has received much-deserved critical acclaim; three of the releases won Gramophone Awards, and this 1994 recording won a Diapason d'Or. Concerto Italiano is a group whose roster is flexible, based on the requirements of the music performed, and here seven unaccompanied singers configure themselves in a variety of combinations in the five-part madrigals.

The style of Italian early music conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini and his Concerto Italiano might be described as both strongly expressive and highly intelligent. Consider this recording of Monteverdi's Sixth Book of Madrigals, pieces that hover between the older polyphonic madrigal tradition and the newer, essentially soloistic and dramatic language of opera. The texts of these mostly five-part pieces focus almost exclusively on extremely melancholy depictions of mourning for love lost, mostly through death – something Alessandrini in his detailed and highly informative notes attributes to the death of Monteverdi's wife and his favorite female student shortly before the music was composed. Alessandrini takes the ideal of text expression as paramount, downplaying larger formal details in favor of a sequence of extremely intense moments.

Rinaldo Alessandrini's brilliantly realized recording of Monteverdi's Vespers is an intimate, slightly pared down version of the early Baroque masterpiece. Working in the warm acoustic of Rome's Palazzo Farnese, he employs just one singer per part, and eliminates instrumental doublings in the choral movements except where they are expressly indicated. The result is a compact, richly haloed sound that won't ever knock you out of your chair, but which flatters the more intimate solo and duet movements that can sound anemic in grander productions; with the sound gap between the biggest and smallest movements closed, each holds its own within the overall structure of the piece. While Alessandrini deserves credit for his conception and leadership, and especially his insightful treatment of Monteverdi's ever-changing rhythmic flow, it is his group of 12 singers that make the strongest impression.

Sara Mingardo has been creating quite a stir in baroque circles but this is my first chance to catch up with her. In one sense she may be considered a "typical" baroque singer, in the sense that she uses a completely straight vocal production, from which vibrato has been rigorously excluded, and cultivates a somewhat plangent, nasal sound, with the result that a casual listener might suppose he was listening to a counter-tenor.

Rinaldo Alessandrini and his Concerto Italiano have a well-deserved reputation for combining insight, fresh interpretative vigor and wide-ranging technical accomplishment in their performances of the Italian late Renaissance and Baroque repertoires. This CD of two masses – from Pergolesi (1710-1736) and Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) – stands as ample demonstration of these strengths.

Pergolesi's legendary Stabat Mater for solo soprano and alto acquired its mystique early on: not only does it boast striking melodies and harmonies, but the composer finished it just days before dying of tuberculosis at age 26. That irresistibly mythic circumstance, combined with the sacred nature of the text, led to an air of reverence that has surrounded the work for two centuries. It's this reverence that Rinaldo Alessandrini means to strip away, showing us the very theatrical style in which Pergolesi actually wrote. Using only six period string instruments rather than the customary small orchestra, Alessandrini directs a remarkable performance: the very quick or very slow tempos, sudden accents, and dynamic extremes are often surprising but always credible.

This isn't the 'Vivaldi Vespers', or even a reconstruction of a specific event, but a kind of 'sacred concert' in Vespers form, of the sort that Venetian churches in Vivaldi's time would mount in the name of worship.
Whether he ever supplied all the music for any such occasion isn't clear, but he certainly set plenty of Vespers texts, enough at any rate for Rinaldo Alessandrini and scholar Frédéric Delaméa to put together this rich programme.

The arias, duets, recitatives and overtures in this recording are not grouped according to a set theme or singing style: heroic tenors, rival queens or famous castrati. Instead, if the sleeve-notes are to be believed, soprano Sandrine Piau, contralto Sara Mingardo and conductor Rinaldo Alessandrini set out simply to enjoy themselves by performing favourite works from across Handel’s operatic output. Their only rules were to omit the very famous numbers - ‘Cara sposa’ from Rinaldo, for example, is not included - maintain a sense of mood contrast, and to include opening recitatives as a means of placing the characters within the dramatic context of each opera.

This new recording is like an insert between the books of madrigals that mark the course of Rinaldo Alessandrini’s discography, in his long-term progress towards a complete recorded edition. Daylight is a continuation of Night, which appeared on the occasion of the 350th Anniversary of the composer’s birth. Not only do we have the same thematic, non- chronological concept - a sort of ‘Best Of’ Monteverdi’s nine books of madrigals and opera arias, augmented by instrumental pieces by Falconieri and Marini - but it also has its own discrete dramaturgy, from dawn to the full sunlight of day, a scenario conceived by the Italian conductor and harpsichordist.