In the forty years that he has been working on Monteverdi, Rinaldo Alessandrini has revealed the beauty, poetry and genius of the music. Today, naïve publish a box set containing the entire collection of his recordings of the madrigals with Concerto Italiano: 12 hours of music on 11 CDs, including previously unreleased Books I and IX.

Rinaldo Alessandrini’s vast discography with his Concerto Italiano has included Monteverdi’s madrigals, presented whenever he wished, interlinked themes and personal dramaturgies. This complete, non-chronological collection, which began in 1993 with Book IV, then gradually increased over the years up to Books I and IX, recorded last year, as yet missing from their catalogue, has now culminated in the publication of a dense, full and well-documented box set.

The further Rinaldo Alessandrini advanced in his demanding and exhaustive quest, the more he discovered and mastered the inexhaustible richness of a musical art intimately linked to the theatre and the emotions. “A theatre,” he says, “made of humanity, of aspiring to the sublime and the joyful resolution of life’s sorrows through love, the curative power of song and the energetic exaltation of dance.”

Today, the Italian conductor and harpsichordist is one of the undisputed masters of this exceptional vocal heritage, the best-loved of which is the famous Book VIII devoted to madrigals of love and war, with the Combattimento de Tancredi e Clorinda, the Lamento de la ninfa and Hor che’l ciel e la terra, Book VI with its Lamento d’Arianna and Zefiro torna, voted Editor’s Choice by Gramophone, and Book II, winner of a Gramophone Award.

All the subtlety of the intimate intermingling of text and music unfolds, in ever renewed variety.

Each recording has also contributed to the methodical, fascinating and detailed construction of a personal vision of Monteverdi’s work, aided by the unfailing commitment and inspired voices of Concerto Italiano.

These recordings of the whole opus, with the addition of two hitherto unpublished books, complete a monumental work, already widely and unanimously praised, and also crown a Monteverdi cycle which began at the Barcelona Liceu in 2021.