Founded in 2018 by the singer Emiliano Gonzalez Toro, a specialist in baroque music and Monteverdi in particular, the ensemble I Gemelli has set itself the task of protecting the great works of the Italian "Seicento" (meaning 17th century), not hesitating to unveil many scores that are as yet still unpublished, waiting deep in the libraries for the musicians who will bring them to life.
This is the case for composer Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, to whom the conductor and her ensemble dedicate their first album, with several superb psalms and motets collected here to form an office of “Vêpres à la Vierge” (Vespers to the Virgin). It’s the extraordinary richness of the Italian convents’ archives that has enabled the unearthing of this sensual and delicate music published some thirty years ago after Montevardi’s Vêpres, which seems to have served as a model.
A nun, then abbess of the convent of Saint Ragedonde in Milan, Chiara Margarita Cozzolani was born into an upper-class Milanese family. Emiliano Gonzalez Toro’s choice was the collection of the 1650 Salmi a otto voci ("Psalms for 8 voices") and the Concerti sacri, published in 1642. They are connected to each other by an older work, composed by Caterina Assandra, with the text of "Duo Seraphim" already set to music by Monteverdi in his own Vêpres from 1610.
Looking to the future, with the use of dissonances reinforcing expression, these psalms and motets alternate between parts for choir and those for soloists, with a voice treatment designed to highlight the talent of the singers of Sainte-Radegonde. A double debut album: the first for the ensemble and the first dedicated to this composer whose talent demands our full attention, just like her contemporaries Cavalli, Strozzi or Benedetto Ferrari. © François Hudry/Qobuz