‘Chromaticism is a rare and exotic bloom in Western tune,” writes Exaudi’s director James Weeks in his wonderfully complete essay in his crew’s disc of gradual 16th-century choral works. “It flowers handiest when conditions allow: when a harmonic conception exists that might perhaps perhaps accommodate it, and extra importantly when composers absorb the desire to make exercise of it to develop the emotional expressiveness of their tune.”

Exaudi’s exploration of the energy of chromaticism begins with the high renaissance settings of Orlando di Lasso – his motet Timor et Tremor and six of the cycle of 12 motets that come up his Prophetiae Sibyllarum. It then moves by procedure of settings of extra remarkable composers such as Vicente Lusitano and Nicola Vicentino to total with Marenzio and Luzzaschi, whose madrigals – settings of Petrarch and a bit of Dante’s Inferno respectively – seem like poised on the cusp between the renaissance and the early baroque.

It’s tune that used to be aloof within the identical duration as Gesualdo’s worthy better known madrigals, which as soon as in a while exercise chromaticism and dissonance to even extra spectacular develop. But the writhing, convoluted strains of these pieces, negotiated with exemplary precision and readability by the seven singers of Exaudi, their voices perfectly matched and balanced, elevate their obtain expressive energy. Right here is a disc that becomes extra spell binding and gripping the extra you be all ears to it.