Top 10 Monteverdi recordings
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
This Top 10 is an ideal introduction to Monteverdi's music, featuring outstanding recordings of his key works from Les Arts Florissants, La Venexiana, Concerto Italiano and more
Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) can be justly considered one of the most influential figures in the history of music. Among his most notable works are the operas Orfeo and L’incoronazione di Poppea, and one of the greatest of all sacred pieces, the 1610 Vespers. We have gathered 10 of the most outstanding recordings of Monteverdi's music, including a fair number of Gramophone Award winners, in order to provide an ideal introduction for new listeners, and perhaps some new avenues for long-standing devotees.
Madrigali Volume 1: Cremona
Les Arts Florissants / Paul Agnew
Gramophone Awards 2016 Winner - Baroque Vocal
'If a keen sense of the interpretative moment is the hallmark of ensemble performance at its best, then this new Monteverdi instalment from Les Arts Florissants deserves to be held up as such.' Fabrice Fitch
Selva morale e spirituale
Cantus Cölln, Concerto Palatino / Konrad Junghänel
Gramophone Awards 2002 Winner - Baroque Vocal
'It must be said that the instrumentalists of Concerto Palatino never for a moment sound tired: from the miraculous cornetto duets of Bruce Dickey and Doron Sherwin‚ to the beautifully blended sackbuts‚ the always vivacious violins and the perfectly balanced continuo group‚ they repeatedly add energy to the performances. This set is a remarkable achievement. Anybody at all interested in Monteverdi’s music will want to own it.' David Fallows
L'Orfeo
Sols incl Emanuela Galli , Mirko Guadagnini, Marina De Liso, Cristina Calzolari; La Venexiana / Claudio Cavina
Gramophone Awards 2008 Winner - Baroque Vocal
'Cavina's wonderful account goes straight to the top of the list of recommended recordings. Do not miss it.' Richard Lawrence
Vespri solenni per la festa di San Marco
Sols; Concerto Italiano / Rinaldo Alessandrini
Gramophone Awards 2015 Winner - Baroque Vocal
'The resonant yet exquisitely transparent acoustic weaves its spellbinding magic on the single voices and accomplished instrumentalists of Concerto Italiano, who navigate their way skilfully through the grandeur, intimacy, rhetorical drama and textural subtlety that the music demands at the drop of a hat. Much of the music-making has perfect conversational qualities, especially in the interplay between the concertante solo voices and the blossoming textures of the ripieno groups (the climax to the Magnificat is thrilling stuff).' David Vickers
Vespro della beata Vergine
Pygmalion / Raphaël Pichon
Gramophone Awards 2024 Shortlist - Choral
'This recording is hugely welcome and will take a much-deserved place in my personal pantheon of greats. If you have any doubts, just listen to the zippy recorder-playing in the Magnificat’s ‘Fecit potentiam in bracchio suo’ – a flamboyant Mantuan moment that will surely stir the hardest of hearts.' Edward Breen
Ottavo Libro dei Madrigali, Vol 1
Concerto Italiano / Rinaldo Alessandrini
Gramophone Awards 1998 Winner - Baroque Vocal
'The Concerto’s account of the second part (“Cosi soil d’una chiara fonte viva”) is remarkable, not least for its inspired isolation of vocal lines of great lyrical power passed between the voices; the result is a revelation. There are now a good number of recordings of the pieces from the Eighth Book available, but no serious Monteverdian can afford to be without this one.' Iain Fenlon
The Other Vespers
I Fagiolini / Robert Hollingworth
Gramophone Awards 2018 Shortlist - Choral
'This ‘other Vespers’ contributes fresh ideas about how to interpret music about which plenty of matters are far from settled, in addition to being a fine advocacy of Monteverdi’s later Venetian-period sacred works.' David Vickers
L'incoronazione di Poppea
Elsa Benoit (Poppea), Jake Arditti (Nerone), Ambroisine Bré (Ottavia), Iestyn Davies (Ottone), Alex Rosen (Seneca), Stuart Jackson (Arnalta), Cappella Mediterranea / Leonardo García Alarcón
'Played out on a plain, open stage with a few tables and chairs for a set, it profits from vividly realistic acting by its smartly modern-dressed performers; realism and depth, after all, are what has been handed to them with timeless genius by Busenello’s libretto and Monteverdi’s music, and it is received gratefully.' Lindsay Kemp
Madrigali guerrieri ed amorosi (featuring Combattimento)
Bernarda Fink, Maria Christina Kiehr, Antonio Abete, Victor Torres; Concerto Vocale / René Jacobs
Gramophone Collection article on Combattimento - Top Choice
'This one won’t please everyone, but, as is so often the case with Jacobs, strong ideas strongly realised really do a memorable interpretation make. In a tough field it won my vote for its moments of emotional power, successfully integrated into a coherent yet dramatically urgent whole.' Lindsay Kemp
Read the Gramophone Collection
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria
Sols; Monteverdi Choir & English Baroque Soloists / John Eliot Gardiner
Gramophone January 2019 - Recording of the Month
'All the old dramatic clarity of Gardiner’s Monteverdi accounts are here but it’s as if the camera has zoomed in. For the first time we hear husk and breath as well as melody, our ears drawn constantly to the subtlest detail of instrumental shading or vocal colour. There’s a sense of exhilaration, of risk, to this musical proximity. Standing inches from a musical oil painting, you can suddenly pick out the brush strokes that energise the whole. There are more classically beautiful accounts of Il ritorno d’Ulisse available, but perhaps none with quite so much life.' Alexandra Coghlan
