The review is very flattering! It fills us with joy…
CD: Pomponio Nenna, Il primo libro di madrigali, Ricercar, Pomponio Nenna bittet zum Tanz – 25/04/2026, Online Merker / Dirk Schauß.
“Before Carlo Gesualdo exploded the codes of harmony, there existed in southern Italy an era of innocence and dazzling light. At the heart of this rediscovery stands Pomponio Nenna, born in Bari in 1556. His “Primo Libro de Madrigali” of 1582 is not a melancholy confession but a sensual celebration; and the ensemble Comet Musicke brings it back to life with an elegance and freshness rare in the field of early music. Nenna considered himself all his life a gentleman, a knight, and this noble lightness runs through every note of this recording.
The album revolves around a joyful event: the birth of the ducal heir Antonio Carafa. When Nenna composes here, one seems to hear springing from the notes themselves the bonfires of the Neapolitan streets and the chimes of the bells of Andria. There reigns a sonic euphoria that one would hardly have imagined in this composer who, later, descended alongside Gesualdo into the abysses of dissonance. Here still prevails the pure voluptuousness of sound that caresses the ear instead of challenging it with experimental daring.
Under the direction of Francisco Mañalich, the musicians grasp the tone of these works with remarkable assurance. In a full, breathing sonority, the voices merge into a living organism without losing their individual presence. Myriam Arbouz and Sarah Lefeuvre lead the soprano registers with a clarity that is never cutting, curling like a fine silk thread around the middle tessituras. In the polyphony, every phrase remains legible: each imitation, each playful intervention of the tenors or of the bass can be followed with precision. A shared breathing gives the architecture of the madrigals a palpable suppleness and vitality.
The integration of the instrumental interludes is particularly successful. Works for organ by Giovanni de Macque and Giovanni Maria Trabaci, transcribed for a consort of viols and vihuelas, acquire here an entirely new warmth and colours. A special moment of grace is the eleventh track of the disc: the “Consonanze stravaganti”. The viols deploy there a harmonic spectrum that almost makes one forget that these melodies were originally written for keyboard. The result is a meditative density that suspends time for the listener.
Of course, in Nenna the premonition of what would come later already surfaces. Those who read the texts attentively will discover, among the evocations of flowers and herbs, the first subtle shadows. In madrigals such as “D’ogni ben casso e privo”, the frictions multiply, a fate worse than death is deplored. One can already hear dawning that Neapolitan style that would soon upheave the musical world. The historical irony is delicious: Nenna’s patron, Fabrizio Carafa, was precisely the unfortunate man whom Gesualdo surprised years later in the conjugal bed before assassinating him. Nenna would then enter, almost without transition, the service of the murderer! However, listening to this disc, the tragedy still remains a distant echo, barely perceptible.
With this recording, Comet Musicke achieves the rare feat of offering a journey into the past that seems at the same time astonishingly present. The rhythms are playful, the melodies flow with an obviousness that recalls the finest moments of Luca Marenzio. Here, it is not a matter of presenting a learned, didactic story but rather the pure joy of living of a young knight from Apulia still painting his world in the brightest colours. Anyone wishing to discover how Naples sounded before the shadows lengthened will find in it a true jewel: a refined and sensual pleasure for all those who love the madrigal as a living experience.”
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