Vivaldi and Albinoni have cornered the Venetian late baroque market to such an extent that other fellow Venetians are all too easily forgotten. Benedetto Marcello, younger brother of Alessandro, was born in 1686. Like Albinoni, the two brothers styled themselves “dilettanti”, Benedetto gaining for himself a reputation as a writer. Indeed, as author of an extremely entertaining treatise, Il Teatro alla moda, in which Vivaldi among many others is lampooned, he caused quite a stir. Benedetto Marcello was not a prolific composer but much of what he did produce is well worth performing, above all perhaps his 50 settings of psalms in Italian paraphrase, published in the mid 1720s under the title Estro Poetico-Armonico, and the many chamber cantatas and vocal duets. It is from the extensive surviving literature of the two last-mentioned categories that the music on this disc is drawn.
The programme offered by La Venexiana consists of four cantatas and six duets most of which easily hold our attention with their harmonic skill and melodic charm. The texts as usual deal with infidelity or unrequited love; Lucrezia fits into the first category, Onda d’amaro pianto into the second, while La Stravaganza embraces both. And, as is invariably the case with such texts, the presence of evocative similes provides the composer with frequent opportunities for word and image painting.
Performances are style-conscious without being mannered. Both soprano Rossana Bertini and countertenor Claudio Cavina negotiate the frequent passages of virtuoso writing with technical ease, though Cavina’s voice, plummy in the alto register and inclined to scoop up to notes, is to my ears the less pleasing of the two. Even so he brings Lucrezia to life with impassioned declamation though, as throughout the programme, I felt that the texts suffered from under-characterization. Bertini’s two cantatas, La Stravaganza and Onda d’amaro pianto, come over well. The latter begins with some extraordinarily wide intervals as difficult to place as they are to predict. She copes well with Marcello’s exacting demands though just occasionally I wondered if the music turned out sufficiently diverting to warrant all the hard work.
All in all, an interesting release, perhaps designed more for specialists than the general listener. None of the pieces has been previously recorded, as far as I know and Opus 111 are to be congratulated for an enterprising project, stylishly realized and well presented. Excellent recorded sound.'