L'Orfeo has become enough of a standard that it's no longer treated as a museum piece requiring reverential sobriety in its presentation, but even by modern standards, Naïve's recording must qualify as one of most uninhibited and vivacious on disc. This quality is not merely a matter of tempo, even though this version is overall somewhat faster than the average. Rinaldo Alessandrini, director of Concerto Italiano, cites extensive theoretical writings by Monteverdi and his contemporaries concerning the necessity of extreme ...
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L'Orfeo has become enough of a standard that it's no longer treated as a museum piece requiring reverential sobriety in its presentation, but even by modern standards, Naïve's recording must qualify as one of most uninhibited and vivacious on disc. This quality is not merely a matter of tempo, even though this version is overall somewhat faster than the average. Rinaldo Alessandrini, director of Concerto Italiano, cites extensive theoretical writings by Monteverdi and his contemporaries concerning the necessity of extreme rhythmic flexibility, particularly in the recitatives, to allow them to follow the natural rhythms of speech as closely as possible. A contemporary, Aquilino Coppini, wrote that Monteverdi's music requires " a beat that is not always regular: sometimes you must press ahead or abandon yourself to a slackening of speed, then hasten on once more," and Monteverdi encouraged the use of sprezzatura (studied carelessness) in regard to rhythmic notation. Most modern performers put...
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