Uno + One: Italia Nostra

New York vocal ensemble Tenet here offers a Monteverdi-rich selection of 17th-century Italian vocal duets and solos. The two sopranos – Jolle Greenleaf (who is also the group’s artistic director) and Molly Quinn – sound as if they’re having a ball of a time, delighting in nimbly negotiating the athletic workouts that are so often used in this repertoire to communicate emotional pain and despair. The voices blend so well that the works for single voice seem, by comparison, to be missing something. But the cantata by Luigi Rossi and madrigal by Martino Pesenti still sound altogether more persuasive than the purely instrumental items by Castaldi, Castello, and Kapsberger, where the playing constitutes something of a weak link. url.ie/e8oo