Benevoli:
Missa Benevola (for Four Choirs)

Carissimi:
Jephte
Paratum, cor meum
Super flumina Babylonis

The second in I Fagiolini’s series exploring the ‘Colossal Baroque’ and the dazzling multi-choir soundworld of Orazio Benevoli – a crucial ‘lost’ figure in 17th-century Italian music. The four-choir work on this new recording, 'Missa Benevola', is accentuated with even more instrumental colour to allow the ear to appreciate the dance between the four separated ensembles. Enjoy the famous ‘mule’ technique that Handel noted 50 years later and then re-used in Messiah. Alongside this, Carissimi’s well-known Jephte transposed to the lower pitch used in Rome at the time, injecting a more profound colour into both individual voices and its famously plangent final chorus. All the Masses in I Fagiolini’s Benevoli series are premiere recordings.