The Italian ensemble La Venexiana, renowned for their ongoing recording project of Monteverdi’s madrigals, present the first issue of another groundbreaking cycle: the Gesualdo Edition. This is a direct consequence of the many enthusiastic letters and emails received at Glossa regarding the need for a reference recording of the Prince of Venosa’s madrigalistic output.

Carlo Gesualdo is one of the most fascinating composers. It is hard to escape the temptation of seeing in his madrigals the tortured reflection of his psyche, beginning with the murder committed in 1590, when he caught his first wife Maria d’Avalos in blatant adultery with her lover Fabrizio Carafa.

The madrigals of the Fifth and Sixth Books are to Gesualdo what the black paintings are to Goya: works conceived in a state of solitude, with no fetters on the artist’s imagination, born in enclosed spaces and used to moving around in their gloom. It is a music fitting to resonate in remote and unusual places.

There remains, of course, the possibility of listening to it in concert, but then, in order to liberate all its troubling charge, its sounds should be heard through a gate or a door, with the musicians singing out of sight in a different room. Perhaps the disc allows for a reenactment of these conditions. Try it out for yourselves.