Matteo Messori - Luzzasco Luzzaschi: Complete Keyboard Music (2014)
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 424 Mb | Scans included | Time: 01:12:00
Genre: Classical | Label: Brilliant Classics | # 94169
EAC | FLAC | Image (Cue&Log) ~ 424 Mb | Scans included | Time: 01:12:00
Genre: Classical | Label: Brilliant Classics | # 94169
The Ferrara‐born Luzzasco Luzzaschi might not exactly be a household name, but his contribution to the development of the madrigal places him within that elite category of composers who helped shape the course of music history. The favourite musician of Duke Alfonso II, the last of the legitimate d’Este (the most intellectual and cultivated dynasty of Renaissance Italy) it was Luzzaschi who, in his role as the finest keyboard player of the period, cultivated the open score approach to performance. This was essentially a sort of motet of madrigal without words that focused on highly refined counterpoint and on the complexity of fugues i.e. four‐voice writing, without recourse to embellishment or any added prettiness. Only the second of the composer’s three books of ricercari, as detailed in this recording, has survived – a regrettable fact, given that the 1578 manuscript is unrivalled in its complexity among keyboard music of the second half of the 16th century.