Monteverdi: Madrigali Libri I-IX

The Dutch musician Krijn Koetsveld has often conducted Bach, and he was founder-director of The Netherlands Bach Ensemble. However, it is the name of Claudio Monteverdi with which he is indelibly associated: he first encountered the composer’s music in 1972, and describes it as ‘love at first sight, which never passed’. This relationship matured over time into the foundation of a soloistic vocal group, Le Nuove Musiche, with the technical skills, the scholarly understanding and the musical sensitivities to do justice to the highly intimate, sophisticated genre of Renaissance madrigal, of which the nine books by Monteverdi represent its summit and fullest flowering. Recording all nine books, and several other mini-dramas and vocal chamber works which fall within the genre but outside the books themselves, began in 2004 and was only completed in 2018. Koetsveld contributes a lively and authoritative introduction to the whole project in the booklet. He remarks: ‘Nine books of madrigals, a