O felici occhi miei - Lute Music from Renaissance Italy - CD

O felici occhi miei marks a welcome first solo outing for lutenist Eduardo Eguez on Glossa, adding to the label's long succession of releases devoted to Italian Renaissance music. The poem behind this album's title refers to happiness and cruelty, harmony and discord, contrasts evoked by Eguez's programme which focuses on music by five leading Italian lutenists from the first half of the sixteenth century, Francesco Canova da Milano, Alberto da Ripa, Pietro Paolo Borrono, Giovanni Paolo Paladino and Perino Fiorentino. The work and lives of these composers were all mixed up in the Italian Wars (1494-1559) which will have overshadowed their compositional activities as much as their playing at those various courts embroiled in the conflict. Eguez elegantly explores this bellicose time with virtuosic fantasias and sprightly dances, but also with diminutions on vocal intabulations - with these last emphasizing this new release's Glossa family connections, as three of the tracks feature vocal contributions from La Compagnia del Madrigale and the sessions took place in that ensemble's favoured location of the aptly contemporaneous church in Roletto, just outside the city of Turin.