Swedish ensemble
Harmony of Voices performs a variety of early Baroque vocal and instrumental music from Italy. Founded in 2003, the group is conducted by
Fredrick Malmberg, who leads it with discipline, energy, and attention to the details of period-performance practice. The quintet of singers has pure, focused voices ideal for this repertoire and they make the most of the expressive possibilities the composers wrote into the music. In the madrigal Zefiro Torna, one of the composer's liveliest and catchiest works, tenors Leif Aruhn-Solén and Johan Linderoth sing with intensity, humor, and pathos as the different sections require, and the ensemble plays the passacaglia with nuance and spirit. In "Amor," the middle section of "Lamento della Ninfa," another passacaglia that brings of some of Monteverdi's subtlest and most memorable text setting, mezzo-soprano
Lena-Susanne Norin sings with soulful, limpid tone, accompanied by the two tenors. The Monteverdi works stand out from those by Dario Castelli and Giacomo Carissimi; it's almost unfair to pair some of Monteverdi's most appealing pieces with the workmanlike efforts of the lesser composers, which heard on their own might have made a stronger impression. The performances throughout are so extraordinarily fine, though, that it's easy to recommend the disc without reservation. The sound of Proprius' SACD is impeccable.