Adriatic Voyage

Program: #24-44   Air Date: Oct 28, 2024

NOTE: All of the music on this program features the Marian Consort and our guest Rory McCleery. The recording, Adriatic Voyage,  is on the Delphian label and is CD DCD 34260. For more information:

www.marianconsort.co.uk

In March 1575, a party led by the Venetian diplomat Giacomo Soranzo set out on a mission to Constantinople. They sailed down the Istrian coast, along the length of present-day Croatia, and on to the Bay of Kotor. Much of the land they passed was the territory of the Serenissima—inhabited by both Italians and Slavs, and of strategic importance since it was exposed to constant Turkish threats from the Balkan hinterland.

Two of Delphian’s most admired ensembles join forces for this imaginative programme of sacred and secular music by composers working along the Dalmatian coast in the decades after Soranzo’s expedition. It was a time in which constant movement of people and trade of goods created linguistic and cultural cross-currents, in contrast to the sharp distinctions encouraged in later centuries by the emergence of modern nation states. Much of this music would have been regarded as Venetian, but the journey points up intriguing differences between the composers and pieces presented, many of them in premiere recordings, while violinist and director Bojan Čičić’s interactions with cornettist Gawain Glenton—and the rich ornamentation contributed by all the musicians here—bring the period back to vivid, unforgettable life.

From Gramophone: Well, this is rather gorgeous. The ‘Adriatic Voyage’ of this collaboration between Rory McCleery’s Marian Consort and Bojan Čičić’s Illyria Consort refers to a diplomatic trip to Constantinople made in 1575 by the Venetian diplomat Giacomo Soranzo, a man of that moment in Italy, thanks in particular to his victorious exploits as a naval commander at the battle of Lepanto, which in 1571 had ended Turkish maritime ambitions in the Adriatic and was essentially the reason for this negotiating mission.

As for the musical programme, at its midway point sits the madrigal composed in Soranzo’s honour in 1573 by Bartolomeo Sorte, I superbi colossi: no translation needed to catch that one’s drift, and The Marian Consort’s reading of it here comes with appropriately adoring, elegantly lilting emphasis on the many repeats of Soranzo’s name. Either side, meanwhile, sit some of the musical spoils—much of it recorded here for the first time—of the quickening of artistic activity subsequently enjoyed by the towns along Soranzo’s route, as Turkish strategists set their sights elsewhere and relative peace descended.

Highlights are numerous, but I’ll start with Rory McCleery’s soft, bright, buoyant countertenor tones floating over the sunnily secular madrigal Donna ingrata by Gabriello Puliti (c1575/80 1642/43), a Tuscan-born friar who served in a number of Istrian towns including Pola (now Pula). This one has suavely merry theorbo support from David Miller as its constant accompanying thread, on to which further dancing instrumental interjections are dropped in as delicious little amuse-bouches, organist Steven Devine’s birdy flute song being a personal favourite.

Equally ear-pricking are the vocal blending and superglued-together ornamentations from tenors Edward Ross and Ben Durrant over the following motet, Bone Jesu by Vinko Jelić´ (Vinzenz Jelich, 1596–1636), a Rijeka-born Croatian who travelled in the opposite direction to Puliti, ending up in Alsace. Or, for a shot of The Marian Consort’s clean, lucid-textured unaccompanied sound by way of sophisticated early Italian Baroque polyphony, head to the gently reverent Ave Maria by Giulio Schiavetto (Julije Skjavetic, fl1562–65). An instruments-only highlight, meanwhile, is the section of the programme given over to three sonatas published in Venice in 1628 by Tomaso Cecchino (Cecchini, c1583–1644), and in particular Sonata 8’s conversation between Čičić’s nimble violin and Gawain Glenton’s florid, dulcet-toned cornett ornamentations.

In short, this is a cornucopia of sacred and secular instrumental and vocal music, performed with arresting, period-evocative beauty, which highlights not just what a fascinating period this was for Italian-Slav cross-cultural blending but also how little most of us know about it.