This debut album of L’Estro d’Orfeo ensemble takes its title Altri Canti d’Amor from a madrigal found in Claudio Monteverdi’s Eighth Book of Madrigals. The program focuses on the music of the Italian Seicento and more precisely on the schools of northern Italy; mainly the Venetian school. It combines both instrumental and vocal pieces- the latter in instrumental versions- connected to the subject of ‘love’. Using instruments instead of the voice may initially seem perverse for such a title, but to the ensemble it suggests the idea of “other ways of singing about love.” This album thus reaffirms the great value and importance that instruments started gaining in the first half of the 17th century, where they ceased serving merely as accompaniments to the voice and gradually became the main protagonist of the musical scene, attaining a level of virtuosity that had never been explored before.
