SUSO IN ITALIA BELLA Music in the courts and cloisters of Northern Italy
In the Middle Ages Italy was not the unified country that we would like to think of since the nineteenth century, following the Romantic era and the formation of the modern state. It was quite the contrary, a nebula in which there was opposition between the great divisions of the Tyrrhenian West and the Adriatic East, as of the South with its memories of Greece and the North which sought links with the Germanic world in a kind of prefiguration of modern Europe: the Alpine range did not constitute a real barrier.
This defines the fourth subject offered by LA REVERDIE, following on from that of Love ( Speculum Amoris ), Thought ( O tu chara Sciença ) and popular incantation ( Laude di Sancta Maria ). This admirable Italian group, rather than offering a profusion of programmes, seeks each year to investigate one specific aspect of the medieval universe in a kind of poetic and multicoloured recreation with a singular power of evocation.
The story began like a fairy tale: once upon a time there were two sisters, Elisabetta and Ella de'Mircovich who since their earliest childhood were fascinated by the music of the Middle Ages which they had discovered through the performances of the group Sequentia. As they pursued their musical studies they decided to devote themselves to this repertoire by forming their own group to present interpretations that were lively but refined and perfectly polished.
It was at this stage that they met the Caffagni sisters who were moved by the same spirit and endowed with the same level of experience. Conditions were requisite to form LA REVERDIE whose very title conveys the spring-like freshness and renewal which animates their mode of expression. Originally LA REVERDIE was thus an ensemble of four female voices accompanied by all sorts of instruments.
However before long one of the sisters, Livia Caffagni, married the virtuoso cornettist Doron David Sherwin, an American living in Europe, whom she had met at the Schola Cantorum in Basle in the course of their studies. The newcomer provided a masculine counterpart to this feminine ensemble and at the same time enriched the group's range of instrumentation. It is in this five-part form that LA REVERDIE presents itself today, even if some performances require occasional additions while others are restricted to the original female group.
Springlike freshness. This is the impression which emerges from listening to the performances of LA REVERDIE. But what this disc cannot restore, despite its spells, is the amazing visual impact of LA REVERDIE's concerts. The costumes and the carefully recreated postures give each of the group's performances a really theatrical quality which associates the gestures and warmth of the materials with the virtuosity of the voices and the abundance of the instruments. The listeners are completely bewitched, so much so that at the last festival in Herne in the Ruhr valley, the performers were given an ovation lasting a full twenty minutes.
MICHEL BERNSTEIN