The only surviving version of Carlo Gesualdo’s First Book of Madrigals was printed in Spring 1594 by the typographer Vincenzo Baldini. At the time, the composer was twenty-eight years old and had just left behind the murder of his wife, in 1590. In this first publication Gesualdo probably collected pieces composed earlier than 1591. The music is written by a young author, far away from the better-known experimental composer of later years, yet is clear and faultless, and often very effective.

La Compagnia del Madrigale releases another imaginative album on Glossa, turning to a late composition by Orazio Vecchi, Le veglie di Siena from 1604.

The Fleming Giaches de Wert spent almost his entire life in Italy at the Gonzaga court in Mantua. He was one of those great composers who are able to transcend fashions and create art that is destined to remain "constant and eternal". The Ninth Book of Madrigals, published in 1588 at a time of personal hardship and pain over his thwarted love for the poetess Tarquinia Molza, marks a high point of artistry and pathos. Wert explores Petrarch's Canzoniere alongside verses by Torquato Tasso, Jacopo Sannazaro and Battista Guarini. He alternates between luminous courtly homages and an innovative lyricism that anticipates the style of Carlo Gesualdo.

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.