Benedetto Pallavicino is one of the foremost madrigal composers of his time. In 1596 he obtained the position of music director at the Gonzaga court in Mantua, towards which he had been striving for a long time – not exactly a cause for joy on the part of his competitor, Monteverdi, 20 years younger and also employed in Mantua. Pallavicino created a total of ten madrigal books for four to six voices, in which an orientation towards the 'modern' madrigal style can be detected from the fourth book onwards.

The ensemble Daltrocanto has selected 19 madrigals from these late madrigal books, based on texts by Giovanni Battista Guarini. His 'Rime' and especially 'Pastor Fido' are amongst the most beloved text sources for madrigals. The texts deal with love in all its facets and Pallavicino sets them with typical stylistic devices such as sharp dissonances and chromatic passages as well as homophonic blocks contrasting with flowing contrapuntal sections. The emotions contained in the poetry are rhetorically and expressively illuminated. Thus Pallavicino proves to be one of the pioneers in the development of the manner of rhetorical-expressive composition that was to culminate in Monteverdi's Seconda Prattica. Some ravishing singing from Alena Dantcheva…