Italian composer Orazio Vecchi (1550-1605) is remembered for his madrigal comedies. Forget that background when you approach this new CD. Tune in instead to the Gothick imagery of the black-shrouded figures on the disc’s cover.
Björn Schmelzer believes that Vecchi’s Requiem, representing “austerity, emptiness, darkness” and a face of the baroque that is black, was used in the Antwerp funeral service of the painter Rubens along with shorter selections by George de La Hèle, Pedro Ruimonte and Duarte Lobo.
The performing style is intense and personal, The singing embraces wide-ranging vocal timbres and features freedoms in embellishment and ensemble that are as far from the conventions of vocal purity as you care to imagine.
