Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, became famous for two reasons: the bloody double murder of his first wife and her lover, and his passionate and erotic view of profane love. The Madrigals chart the changes in Gesualdo’s style, and contain some of the most inspired and anguished vocal works in the entire madrigal repertoire, on the themes of love, rejection, death, suffering, joy and sorrow. Brimming with often astonishing and sometimes unpredictable melodic and tonal contrasts to express the agonies and ecstacies of love, Gesualdo’s Madrigals show him to have been one of the most inventive and eccentric musical minds of his age.

‘If I could have just one set of these madrigals, I have no doubt that I would want to hear the songs spun out as broadly as they are done here. Chromaticism cannot be rushed, and the mannerist style of the turn of the 17th century, which reached its peak in Gesualdo, can absorb every bit of the attention Longhini provides’. - J F Weber, Fanfare

‘Music of incredible harmonic intensity and originality, given eminently precise and interpretively apt performances. Another commendable series on Naxos’. - Steve Holtje, Culture Catch

Contents:
CD 1 The First Book of Madrigals
CD 2 The Second Book of Madrigals • Instrumental pieces
CD 3 The Third Book of Madrigals
CD 4 The Fourth Book of Madrigals
CDs 5-7 The Fifth and Sixth Books of Madrigals