Monteverdi's Zefiro

One of the first recordings I pilfered from the tiny collection (maybe twenty) of records that my parents had was Noah Greenberg's 1954 recording of vocal music of Monteverdi with the New York Pro Musica. I was fourteen, and had just gotten a record player for my room (a KLH reconditioned from summer use in the Tanglewood music library--maybe a model 19 because it had a 16 r.p.m. speed). It was, as I recall, the first year that we had a working record player in the house (my father got one too--his was an AR). My love affair with Monteverdi has been going strong for half a century. "Zefiro" was the first piece on that record.

Ten years ago I posted a video of a wonderful performance of this piece by L'arpeggiata Ensemble, and this week I made an arrangement of it for strings.

[August 28, 2023]

You can find the music on this page of the IMSLP.