Gesualdo di Venosa: Tenebrae Responsoria

Our work of research on the Responses, whose character is so unique, leads to a sonic reconstruction that is a bit " extraverted ". It can not be contented with an approach that the Ancients qualified as hypocrisis, an approach in which the expression of affects is hidden modestly behind the writing. In our desire to reconstruct the work in a configuration that is as close as possible to that which Gesualdo would have heard in his own small chapels, and because all the elements of our understanding of this work leads us to assume the ambitus of the theatrical gesture, it seems to us necessary to integrate the expression of cries, tears, horror, perversity, fear, pain, etc... into the representation of the affetti. In so doing we assume the risk of passing from a totally controlled, smooth interpretation to a totally theatrical approach, exposing our being as musicians in all its fragility. It is the reason for which our faithfulness to the meanings we have gathered from this work leads us to a recording without editing and without concessions.