Ensemble Il Profondo, Flavio Ferri-Benedetti - Passo di pena in pena: Cantate Italiane (2012)

Flavio Ferri-Benedetti has a very pleasant voice (not a `spectacular voice', but an interpretive ability and range that suits these cantatas beautifully, to a `T'). From the first bar of music, the first sung phrase in Scarlatti's Ombre tacite e sole, you'll hear control and clarity of sound. Though comparisons are always subjective and limited, his voice is more reminiscent of singers like Andreas Scholl (one of his earlier singing teachers) and contemporaries such as Brian Asawa, Iestyn Davies, Randall Wong, Valer Barna-Sabadus, rather than the vocal ranges of David Hansen or the compellingly rich mezzo sounds of Cencic or Fagioli. The ensemble plays wonderfully, and the cantata choices of Scarlatti, Bononcini, Porpora, and Vivaldi, with a mid-CD interlude by Locatelli (a sonata published in 1744 that is reminiscent of earlier Corelli music), make this a faultless album. Much of the music washes over you in slow dance rhythms and serene melodies, with obvious changes in tempo here and there; there is a little pace thrown in by way of the final Vivaldi cantata. It's music you can focus intently (and intelligently) upon, or absorb in the background whilst engaged with a couple of dinner guests and a nice bottle of wine during the twilight hours, a dim room, by a gentle river bank, you get the picture... cantatas for an idyllic pastoral world. An added bonus: there are lengthy historical and scholarly notes on the general development of the cantata in Italy, and each of the cantatas themselves. The CD is a worthwhile addition to your specialist Baroque recordings and thankfully, there are more and more examples of these recordings, as singers move away from first----dare we say, safe and default----recordings of well known Vivaldi and Handel arias, to well researched collections featuring `lesser known' (I use that word guardedly) composers, operas, cantatas, and alternative aria versions, often with world premiere recordings (thanks Bartoli, Fagioli, Cencic, Genaux, Kermes, Jaroussky etc.). It's a good time if you are a fan of the baroque.